Banking on storage technology - Trends

Communications News, Nov, 2001

Texas State Bank (TSB) has experienced rapid growth since it was founded in a single-story building 17 years ago. The headquarters in McAllen is now a 12-story complex, as TSB now boasts $2.5 billion in assets. The bank handles an average 200,000 check transactions per day for approximately 60 locations, as well as teller and other transactions--creating a high-volume, data-intensive environment.

Craig Swann, executive VP of information systems, noticed the response times for the transaction processing were slowing significantly. On traditionally busy Friday afternoons, check-cashing response times averaged seven seconds--and exceeded three minutes at peak hours. Swann first considered upgrading the Unisys NX4800--until he traced the problem to an I/O bottleneck caused by the mechanical disk drive's inability to keep up with high-speed processor capabilities.

Swann then turned to Tom Dill of Unisys Corp., who recommended installing solid-state disk (SSD) storage technology to resolve the bottleneck and improve performance. "Placing the fight files on SSDs eliminates the I/O bottleneck," Dill says. "SSDs can accelerate database applications and improve system response times."

More enterprises will be relying on such storage technology to deal with data overload on their networks. According to IDC, worldwide appliance server revenues--including storage technology--will jump from $3.8 billion in 2000 to $31.4 billion in 2005, a compound annual growth rate of 56%. Network attached storage or filer appliance servers will continue to represent the bulk of appliance server revenues, accounting for about 55% of the market through 2005.

Swann tapped Englewood, CO-based Dynamic Solutions International (DSI) for his project. DSI provided Sherlock software, which identifies packet files that should be stored on SSD. The bank then deployed DSI's 3 GB Alpine SSD system--improving average response time on Friday to one-tenth of a second, with peak wait times of four seconds.

The SSD system also cut the bank's nightly update time from six to four hours. "Typically, users come to us with nightly updates that they cannot complete in their allotted time. SSD solves the problem," states Spencer Clark, regional sales manager at DSI. Swann adds, "Now, our system runs faster, and our customers and employees are happier."

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