Raiffeisen Bank Aval has repeatedly declared its leadership position in the quality of service in the Ukrainian banking sector, which is also confirmed by the assessment of many rating and analytical agencies. To achieve such a high level of reputation and trust of clients, a financial institution owes, first of all, a correctly chosen strategy and a competent approach to maintaining and improving its technical capabilities.
It is critical in the bank’s daily work to ensure the continuous and reliable operation of applications, minimizing simple equipment that could potentially limit customer needs.
The solution for distributing the load on application servers – Cisco ACE – was used by the bank for a long time, but at the initiative of the vendor, it was withdrawn from production without a further alternative, so the organization faced the question of its full replacement.
Decisions and results
During the next stage of infrastructure modernization, the bank’s specialists together with the engineers of the “IT-Integrator” company conducted an analysis with subsequent pilot testing of solutions available on the market, with the aim of identifying a product that would most fully satisfy the bank’s needs.
The F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) solution chosen by the bank distributes user-specific requests between servers, managing application performance and availability based on multiple parameters. Thus, the response time during the operation of applications is significantly reduced, increasing the convenience of their use.
Acting on the principle of connecting to the most productive servers, BIG-IP LTM guarantees high reliability of online services and, as a result, users remain fully satisfied.
Vadym Zaparovany, leading project manager from the network direction, “IT-Integrator”: “When offering the customer the F5 BIG-IP LTM solution for testing, we were guided, first of all, by its maturity. By combining various application testing methods, this equipment provides the highest the level of availability, without neglecting reliability. In addition, the bank’s choice of a solution allows to further expand the capabilities of information services due to the introduction of other modules.”
Given the fact that the architecture and interface of the previously used and new equipment are similar, the bank’s technical specialists did not have any issues with the migration, which they carried out on their own.
Serhii Hryshchuk, head of the telecommunications department, Raiffeisen Bank Aval: “Raiffeisen Bank Aval allocates significant resources to minimize equipment downtime. Another point the bank highlights is the absence of any restrictions for customers related to possible system failures. The transition to the F5 BIG-IP i2600 solution keeps a finger on the pulse of the performance of the entire bank’s infrastructure, eliminating errors in time and redirecting traffic to less loaded servers. We can rely on the quality of the devices, which allow us to optimize the bank’s work by promptly deploying applications and rationally using resources.”