Metro Disaster Recovery for a Branch of the People’s Bank of China
Managing a complex hybrid environment comprising both physical and virtualized systems, the branch faced increasing difficulties in maintaining operational agility and strict business continuity standards with its legacy data protection tools.
Client Needs and Challenges
The IT infrastructure of a specific People’s Bank of China branch operates on a hybrid environment comprising both physical servers and virtualization platforms. The architecture utilizes a decoupled deployment strategy, where front-end applications, middleware, and databases are hosted separately. The existing scheduled backup strategy was insufficient to meet the evolving demands of the bank’s critical operations, specifically:
- Infrastructure Refresh: The strict timing requirements for replacing aging hardware with new equipment made seamless transitions difficult to execute effectively.
- Cross-Platform Migration: The need to migrate business systems from physical machines to diverse virtualization platforms and private cloud environments (P2V/P2C) presented compatibility challenges.
- Heterogeneous Data Migration: Migrating data between storage devices of different brands and specifications was complex and restricted by the limitations of traditional migration tools.
- Business Continuity (BC) Assurance: Critical business systems required robust protection to prevent service interruptions caused by system-level failures within the virtualized environment.
- Elevated Compliance Standards: Specific systems, such as the Account Management System, required an upgrade in continuity standards—moving from basic contingency planning to fully compliant, high-availability disaster recovery standards.
Implementation Solution
To address these challenges, the branch implemented a comprehensive solution utilizing the Information2 product suite:
- i2Move was deployed to rapidly provision disaster recovery servers on the virtualization platform at the metro (intra-city) DR site.
- i2Availability was utilized to establish real-time data replication from production to the DR site during normal operations. It further enabled automatic failover of business systems to the DR platform immediately upon detection of a fault, minimizing downtime.
- i2CDP (Continuous Data Protection) was implemented at the DR center to provide centralized data protection. This layer secures data against logical threats such as accidental deletion, operational errors, viruses, Trojans, and ransomware. Additionally, performing data backup operations at the DR center significantly offloads Read/Write I/O pressure from the production systems.
Client Benefits
The metro data migration and disaster recovery solution provided by Information2 effectively resolved the branch’s challenges regarding system upgrades and migrations, allowing these tasks to be performed without disrupting business operations. Most importantly, the solution guaranteed Business Continuity and Zero Data Loss for the bank’s critical business systems.
IT Infrastructure Localization and Market Data System Modernization for a Leading Securities Firm
While the previous case focused on disaster recovery, the following example highlights how financial institutions are driving performance and regulatory compliance through infrastructure modernization and domestic technology adoption.
Client Needs and Challenges
To align with the national IT Application Innovation strategy—which mandates the transition toward fully autonomous and controllable IT supply chains—a leading securities firm initiated a comprehensive architectural overhaul of its Internet Market Data System.
As a core business system, this platform provides Level-1 and Level-2 market quotes and value-added data services to the firm’s vast internet user base. The project aimed to achieve full-stack autonomy, from hardware to software. However, as this was the firm’s first deployment within a fully domestic computing environment, they faced significant uncertainties regarding performance stability and security assurance.
Implementation Solution
The securities firm established a deep strategic partnership with Huawei and Information2 to deliver a high-performance solution:
- Hardware Optimization: Leveraging Huawei’s expertise, the team optimized the foundational infrastructure to unlock the full computing potential of KunPeng This allowed the team to focus on application software porting and adaptation, achieving optimal performance through hardware-software fusion.
- Data Transmission: To handle cross-data center requirements, the solution utilized Information2’s advanced transmission technologies, including packet forwarding and file compression.
- Real-Time Performance: The architecture enabled rapid one-to-many forwarding, allowing a massive number of downstream nodes to receive real-time market quotes simultaneously. The implementation achieved impressive metrics, with a data compression rate of 83% and an internal processing latency of less than 50μs.
Client Benefits
This project resulted in the full compatibility of the firm’s Internet Market Data System and Information2’s forwarding software with Huawei KunPeng processors (domestic silicon) and localized operating systems such as Kylin V10 and EulerOS. This successful deployment realized the strategic goal of a “secure, autonomous, and controllable” IT environment, marking a significant breakthrough in the firm’s infrastructure modernization journey.