Project: Branch Office Deployment - Data and Communication Infrastructure Design and Implementation
The primary objective for this project was to architect and implement a state-of-the-art branch network infrastructure for the client, a prominent South American bank. This implementation is to be the pilot project for the client to deploy infrastructure in additional branches nationwide, with integrated security to address industry compliance and help the customer to build a long-term competitive advantage in the financial services market.
The bank needed to link its branch offices back to the main data center infrastructure in a reliable and secure way, and opted for an integrated Cisco, Check Point and Avaya network architecture to reduce on-going operational costs by combining data and voice functions. With convergence, the overall cost of network ownership is lowered and maintenance simplified through the elimination of separate voice, video, and data infrastructures. In addition to the standard challenges of reliability and performance that face the financial services industry, the bank is required to develop compliance plans and strategies consistent with United States banking and financial regulations, in order to mitigate both business and IT risks. By the end of 2006, the bank intends to connect most of its local branches throughout the United States with enhanced network security.
Two Dell PowerEdge 2850 Servers and two Dell PowerEdge 1850 Servers were selected to accommodate all file, print, and application tasks. The chosen mail server was Microsoft Exchange 2003 running on Windows 2003 with Veritas Commercial VIP v10 backup. Redundant, private and encrypted WAN connections were established for connectivity to the main office in South America, as well as the production and disaster recovery sites at DataPro, the bank's outsourced Operation System Provider. Four Cisco 1760 series routers and a Catalyst 2950 Gigabit Ethernet switch provide internal routing to the headquarters and DataPro facilities. An additional Cisco 2610 router provides perimeter routing. Firewall and encrypted VPN communications are provided by Checkpoint firewalls on Nokia platforms at the Headquarters and branch sites.
Neat Suite for SMB, utilizing Trend Micro technology was also incorporated into the security architecture. Internet Security Systems Proventia G100 technology affords pre-emptive protection and specific threat defense. For the office staff, 15 Optiplex GX 280 workstations using Microsoft Windows XP Professional were deployed, along with two HP Compaq Business DC5000 Desktops operating on Microsoft Windows XP Pro. Four HP printers and three fax machines complete the primary network user devices. The Exabyte VXA-2 1.6 TB packet loader was added for overall data backup service. Two APC Smart-UPS 2200s are utilized to preserve system power.
A trading room was designed and created to facilitate the trading of various financial instruments. The standard trading workstation model is a Dell SX260 with two 17" flat screen monitors to display market data from Bloomberg and customer ledger data. A large plasma screen displays cable television financial programming such as MSNBC. Design measures and policy were developed in compliance with the requirements of the Securities & Exchange Commission to insure physical and electrical separation, to prevent inadvertent leakage of trader information to any surrounding personnel.
The MDS design team for this assignment met with the client's project managers to clearly outline the necessary performance parameters and overall business requirements. Following the initial design phase, implementation was carried out on a step-by-step basis that included a testing period to insure compatibility of all system components. This project is now concluding the final testing period to make any fine adjustments or enhancements to the configurations of the system infrastructure.
