Brief

100 MB file replicated between Chennai and Bangalore every two minutes

Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB) has deployed Riverbed’s Steelhead wide-area data services (WDS) appliances to ensure that its critical banking transaction data is secure and safe, should a disaster occur. TMB has deployed the Steelhead appliances in the company’s Chennai data center and at its Bangalore disaster recovery center.

“It is critical that we protect our banking transaction data,” said Venkatesan, Assistant General Manager, Tamilnad Mercantile Bank. “Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances are a critical component of our DR architecture. We are planning to deploy additional Steelhead appliances at strategic branches across India to improve the performance of banking applications and e-mail across the WAN.”

During peak business hours, TMB generates a 100 MB log file every five minutes. To protect critical banking transaction data, TMB replicates the files from its Chennai data center to its Bangalore disaster recovery center. Prior to installing Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances, replication of this file using Oracle’s Data Guard application took more than 10 minutes. If a disaster were to hit during peak business hours, TMB risked losing over 200 MB of data. The company turned to WDS vendors for a solution and selected Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances over the competition.

Following the installation of the Steelhead appliances, the time taken to replicate TMB’s banking transaction data dropped from over 10 minutes to two minutes. Data traversing the wide area network (WAN) has dropped by over 65 percent and WAN utilisation is down to less than 50 percent. Prior to installation of the Steelhead appliances, utilisation was more than 90 percent.