LAS VEGAS -
"In April, we'll have complete redundancy between our main branch and the disaster recovery center," said Roy Holmstrom, chief financial officer and vice president, information systems at the $584-million CU. "At that point we'll be in excellent condition if we need to respond to a complete loss of our main system."
If business is interrupted, all data and equipment from the six CCCU locations will be replicated and run at 75% capacity from the hot site, he said.
Until then, CCCU is working to migrate to a UNIX mainframe, which will also be backed-up at the hot site, and build a handful of additional, redundant servers. All other systems are backed up and ready to go, including the credit union's imaging, phone and ATM systems, internal programs, communications connections, and Internet circuit.
And the CCCU staff did it all by themselves, Holmstrom said.
"We built all of our own servers and workstations, and we've saved a ton of money doing it," he said. "The savings are what allow us to fund this new data redundancy."
The 125 workstations, with monitors, were built for only $650 each, said Holmstrom.
Whereas the average branded server would cost about $21,000, CCCU builds servers for $6,500 each, he said. Multiply that by the 50 or so servers that are required to run CCCU, and it's clear to see why the credit union has chosen the do-it-yourself approach.
The only equipment that CCCU shopped for was the mainframe and the phone system, Holmstrom added.
Maintenance agreements for the servers and workstations are a thing of the past. "We don't need to pay for ongoing service," he said. Without the costs of third-party equipment and disaster recovery services, the new disaster recovery center will pay for itself in three years, said Holmstrom.
The homegrown hot site also affords CCCU faster data restoration, he continued.
"Our current backup vendor in Oregon receives our updated data files every night," he said. "So, in the event of a disaster, a complete restoration from there would take 24 hours.
"At our new site, the restoration process will only take two hours. We'll have full functionality much more quickly."
Data lost during a disaster will be minimal, if any, said Holmstrom. "We won't have to worry about our connectivity to Oregon, so our maximum data loss should be 15 minutes at the most.
"That's nothing-I can rebuild that amount of data easily," he said.
The term "redundant" actually may be a misnomer for CCCU's systems because Holmstrom makes the backup systems do more than just back-up.
"I hate when equipment sits idle," he explained. "So we're doing our best to also use our backup machines for production, for example, running half of our branches off of the backup Internet circuit."
Do-it-yourself data recovery isn't for everyone, Holmstrom said. "We push very hard to train and certify our staff to maintain the expertise needed. We're comfortable with the technology and engineering and building in the types of redundancies you'd expect from the major manufacturers. And we're comfortable taking it all on."
FOR MORE RESOURCES
Read more about data security and disaster recovery at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
Online Security, for a host of stories on this topic, including how Michigan State FCU built its own solution.
Disaster Recovery, for a variety of stories on this topic, including how one CU simulated disaster to prepare for the real thing.
Communications Redundancy, for a story on the importance of having several back-ups in place.
For more info on this story:
* Clark County CU, www.ccculv.org
