Halkbank Data Center SAN Success Story

Halkbank, one of the largest banks in Turkey, was facing a challenge with its aging, slow storage infrastructure that could no longer keep pace with the bank’s increasing I/O demands. The existing data center was quickly exceeding local energy availability. The bank's core banking, financial instrument, data warehouse, and customer relationship management applications reside on a SAN. It also supports customer-facing services including online, mobile, telephone, and TV banking, as well as credit card transaction processing. All these are mission critical to the bank’s activities. The SAN must interact with Microsoft SQL, VMware, and Oracle databases running on IBM mainframes. This creates a demanding data center environment that requires the scalability and flexibility to dynamically support growth and the addition of new services. Halkbank already stores large amounts of data and expects continued growth. Depending on current bank projects, SAN demand can peak at three to four times normal traffic. Dynamic scalability was a non-negotiable requirement. Availability and high performance were also primary requirements.

Halkbank is one of the largest banks in Turkey with at least one branch in every city. It offers a broad range of retail, small business, commercial, corporate, international banking, Internet banking, insurance, loan, and investment products to its customers. The bank's core banking, financial instrument, data warehouse, and customer relationship management applications reside on a SAN. It also supports customer-facing services including online, mobile, telephone, and TV banking, as well as credit card transaction processing. All these are mission critical to the bank’s activities. The SAN must interact with Microsoft SQL, VMware, and Oracle databases running on IBM mainframes. This creates a demanding data center environment that requires the scalability and flexibility to dynamically support growth and the addition of new services.