Cabling infrastructure for Tatra banka

Banking on a State of the Art Data Center Infrastructure

  

Rosenberger OSI cabling infrastructure solutions at the heart of Tatra banka’s new fit for purpose datacenter

Headquartered in Bratislava, Tatra banka was established in 1990 as the first private bank in Slovakia. It is the country’s third largest bank with more than 100 business locations in all regions of Slovakia and more than 800,000 clients. The multi-award winning bank is a market leader in private and corporate banking services.As part of the RBI Group, the progressive and modern Tatra banka is committed to innovating new solutions for its clients. For example, it was the first bank in Slovakia to offer online credit and debit card management services, as well as applications for Apple and Android wearable devices.

Project Requirements:

  • Ensure state of the art cabling infrastructure for optimized systems performance
  • Support IT migration to new colocation facility
  • Pre-assemble new racks for staged delivery to ensure business continuity
  • Delivery and installation of racks including new electrical and data physical layer infrastructure
  

During the summer and autumn of 2016 Rosenberger Optical Solutions & Infrastructure (Rosenberger OSI) successfully partnered with multinational professional technology services group, Dimension Data, to complete a complex data center migration project on behalf of Tatra banka.

A strategic decision had been taken by the bank to modernize its data center operations in order to meet future business requirements while ensuring maximum availability. This entailed the decommissioning of its existing in-house facility and IT systems to a colocation data center operated by Slovak Telecom in Bratislava. As part of the project requirement the bank also planned new high density server rack systems to be integrated alongside the existing IT equipment to ensure sufficient current and future storage and processing capacity, as well as for optimizing system response times. A state of the art network cabling infrastructure was therefore central to achieving this goal.

  

The challenge

At the outset of the project two principle challenges faced Rosenberger OSI and Dimension Data: Firstly, maintaining the availability of the existing data center throughout the entire migration period was of essential importance to Tatra banka. Until final shutdown, it would remain mission critical for the storage and processing of information on behalf of hundreds of thousands of private and corporate clients and more than 100 branch offices located throughout the country. Equally, for business continuity purposes, the need to keep to a precise project timescale was an absolute prerequisite.

The new high-density rack server systems, specified with Rosenberger OSI network cabling infrastructure technology, had to be ready for delivery and installation at the new data center at strict pre-agreed intervals during May, August and October. This necessitated the pre-assembly of all required rack systems by Dimension Data at its facility in Bratislava, with Rosenberger OSI responsible for the supply of both off-the-shelf and custom cabling solutions to meet specific customer requirements. In parallel with this, the ‘Lift and Shift’ phase of the project required the highly coordinated deinstallation of the customer’s existing server racks and other IT equipment, followed by transportation to the new colocation data hall, reinstallation, configuration and testing.

  

The solution

Following the customer’s acceptance of the tender, based on its ability to meet all project requirements while also offering the most cost-effective solution, Dimension Data with the support of Rosenberger OSI commenced work on the design, pre-assembly and configuration of the required racks, of various densities, for staged delivery and installation at the new data center. Rosenberger OSI was specifically selected due to its comprehensive and innovative international standards-based cabling solutions portfolio and its vision of the future development requirements for data center cabling infrastructure solutions. The following Rosenberger OSI cabling infrastructure products were supplied and designed for the new data center.

Rosenberger OSI was specifically selected due to its comprehensive and innovative international standards-based cabling solutions portfolio and its vision of the future development requirements for data center cabling infrastructure solutions.

The following Rosenberger OSI cabling infrastructure products were supplied and designed for the new data center:

  • Trunk cables: OM4 and OS2
  • SMAP-G2 and relevant patch cords ensuring high density and modularity
  • 6 - 48 channel trunk cables in line with customer requirements: including customization of cabling infrastructure regarding applications and number of channels
  • High packaging density of more than 1000 LCD connections per rack, ensuring sufficient data throughput capacity for customer applications
  

We are very pleased to have successfully completed this largescale project on time and within budget. Our state of the art data center infrastructure will help ensure we stay at the forefront of innovation, supporting our customers with leading edge services. This project also highlights the excellent project management skills and deep level of technological innovation provided by Rosenberger OSI and Dimension Data. Having made the decision to relocate and modernize our data center estate we were able to hand it over to them with total peace of mind.

Mgr. Krtistína Poláková, Senior Project Manager Tatra banka

  

Customer Business Benefits

  • Business continuity maintained throughout transition to new data center
  • New network cabling infrastructure helps ensure highly energy efficient and reliable IT systems, scalability, performance, and security
  • Consistent and faster response times enhance the user experience
  • Significant reduction in data center real estate costs
  • More cost-effective than to have built and maintained their own data center

The rack migration, installation and testing of the existing racks, and the commissioning of the new preassembled racks, proceeded smoothly and on time, enabling a phased switch over to the new facility as planned from May, with full operation of the new data center commencing during October.

Future cabling infrastructure plans at the new data center include migration of the current 10 GB infrastructure prepared for parallel optical data transmission to Rosenberger OSI’s next generation MTP® products.

  

The rack migration, installation and testing of the existing racks, and the commissioning of the new preassembled racks, proceeded smoothly and on time, enabling a phased switch over to the new facility as planned from May, with full operation of the new data center commencing during October.

Future cabling infrastructure plans at the new data center include migration of the current 10 GB infrastructure prepared for parallel optical data transmission to Rosenberger OSI’s next generation MTP® products.

  

Summary

Rosenberger OSI’s cabling infrastructure technology and professional design and installation expertise has helped ensure Tatra banka now has a highly optimized and future-proofed data center networking platform for supporting all of its key strategic business functions and communications.