Seamless System Migration Ensures the Continuity of Financial Services for the Bank of Communications

The Bank of Communications Tokyo Branch is a Japanese-based subsidiary of China's Bank of Communications. As such, it offers a wide range of banking services to its Japanese customers, both individuals and businesses alike, from deposit accounts and loans, to foreign exchange services, focusing on retail, commercial, and corporate banking. In addition, the bank promotes economic cooperation between Japan and China.

An electronic statement system is one of the bank's core systems, used to manage and distribute financial statements and reports to customers through an online platform, eliminating the need for paper-based documents. The system provides automated notifications and alerts to customers, helping the bank to streamline financial reporting and improve efficiency.

Bank of Communications Tokyo Branch

Here, virtualization is key, forming a centralized computing platform that enables much easier management of customer data and file sharing, with multiple Virtual Machines (VMs) running on a single physical server. The bank was looking for a new storage solution to support this, prioritizing high availability, reliability, and performance as well as robust Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities. In addition, the new solution needed to be able to support seamless migration from legacy infrastructure, to ensure service continuity and guarantee the customer experience.

And the bank's choice? Huawei OceanStor Dorado 5000 is a high-performance all-flash storage system designed for mission-critical workloads. The bank opted for two products, one deployed in its headquarters site, the other in a remote data center. A production storage cluster was deployed in the former, blending a Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network-Attached Storage (NAS). In addition, remote data replication and intra-city NAS, in active-active architecture, was established between the two sites.

Huawei's unique virtualization online handover technology makes file sharing easier: the bank created a dedicated VM, allowing employees to access files from different locations. Permissions and access controls were put in place to ensure that only authorized staff have access to sensitive files, improving system security. This handover technology also supports seamless migration from the legacy system, with zero interruption to live services.

With the new storage solution in place, employees now work collaboratively with far more efficiency, regardless of their location, boosting productivity. And with seamless replication formed between the two storage sites, the risks from data breaches and unauthorized access have been minimized.