OKLAHOMA CITY – Tinker FCU recently went live with a virtualized Storage Area Network environment, becoming the only credit union in the U.S. to have the EPISYS core processing system running with this virtualized dual processor infrastructure.
The implementation was the culmination of a three-year development effort between Symitar and the $1.8 billion credit union to rebuild the credit union’s system infrastructure. The new technology has resulted in cost reduction, extended operation capabilities and increased energy efficiency for the credit union.
Virtualization allows Tinker to run multiple operating system environments on the same computer, isolated from each other. The credit union has its primary processor located at its Operations Center, while the back up processor is located miles away in another location. New systems can be created and data sorted and stored without disrupting the production environment. SAN allows for the separation of data storage from the core processing system.
Removing the SCSI architecture from the credit union’s IBM p570 internal disk drives and replacing it with the SAN design, the credit union created a 4GB fiber channel communications platform, reducing processing and data back up times.
With the new architecture, TFCU has reduced its number of servers from 160 to 40, with further reduction planned to eventually take it down to 20.
