The Export-Import Bank of Korea Runs Their Private Cloud on Nutanix
EXIM Bank of Korea, a leading financial services organization and Export Credit Agency (ECA), made it a priority to undergo digital transformation. In this session, learn how EXIM Bank of Korea found a solution for powering their IT environment to keep up with business needs. Plus, hear what decisions the bank to enable and support their employees to work from home under COVID-19.
INDUSTRY
Finance
BENEFITS
- Scalable architecture allows EXIM Bank to manage data explosion
- Speed up time to resolution, reduce business risks to bad threats
- Significant improvement in log collection system and enhanced daily operational efficiencies
- Improved VDI performance for secure and stable remote working for 200 persons
SOLUTIONS
- Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
- Nutanix Files, Nutanix Volumes
APPLICATIONS
- Splunk Log Collection and Analysis Solution
- Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
BUSINESS BENEFIT
Established in 1976, the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank) is a leading financial services organization and an official Export Credit Agency (ECA), which provides financing options for external economic cooperation such as imports and exports, foreign investments and overseas resource development and a comprehensive export loan and guarantee programs to support Korean enterprises conducting business overseas.
With Nutanix HCI, Korea Eximbank innovated its legacy architecture which caused troubles in scaling up as the volume of log data increased. Also, performance wise, Splunk application run on legacy infrastructure did not perform up to expectation, causing bottlenecks in search and analysis tools. With the next-generation infrastructure, the bank can now scale up easily, store and process log data seamlessly, manage increasing size of data easily with better performance in a secure environment.
Korea Eximbank can upgrade and scale up without interrupting services for system downtime, minimizing impacts on services and achieving service continuity for its customers. The IT team is also benefitting from the simple and automated tasks for increasing system performance and scaling up, ease of management as well as manpower efficiency.
We strive to achieve both regulation compliance and Fourth Industrial Revolution technology. In order to do so, we have chosen hybrid cloud as our digital transformation strategy and Nutanix has been very helpful in achieving this.
– Chun SeYoung, Senior Security Officer, Information Security Department, The EXIM Bank of Korea
CHALLENGE
Today due to increasing demands toward digital services, the financial industry in Korea is undergoing a major shift in digital transformation. However, the industry is facing challenges in finding the right technology that can both comply with strict government regulations and strong security measures.
At the same time, Korea Eximbank’s legacy architecture platform was unable to match up to the demands of the Splunk log collection system used for cyber security control. The increasing volume of data also contributed to the system’s performance deterioration.
SOLUTION
The team identified “a need for a different type of node configuration for parallel distribution and decided it was necessary to move to HCI-based system for easy scale-out of capacity and performance in the future. We ended up selecting and adopting Nutanix’s HCI system as a product that would meet all our requirements,” said Chun SeYoung, Senior Security Officer, Information Security Department, Korea Eximbank.
“The total storage capacity of Nutanix HCI for Splunk is configured as Usable 20 terabytes or higher. It is a hybrid storage where SSD and HDD are combined; and we’re taking advantage of it without sacrificing performance,” added Chun.
CUSTOMER OUTCOME
Scalable architecture allows EXIM Bank to manage data explosion
“HCI utilizes all advantages of virtualization, it is appropriate for solutions like Splunk that require flexible change of configuration and easy scale-up/scale-down of capacity. The system resources can be flexibly distributed to the times and the points that require intensive performance by each component. Also, if more computing performance and storage capacity are required as a whole, expansion is possible by simply adding nodes in the middle of operation, without affecting the existing service. In addition, it has been proven to have positive effects on service reliability and timeliness to increase performance,” explained Chun.
Speed up time to resolution, reduce business risks to bad threats
Should there be system performance issues, the administrator of traditional architecture would need to “log into countless systems one by one” to identify the faulty component. The length of detection time increases the exposure risk of resolving cyber threats in severe cases.
Today, the administrators can operate and monitor the health of all servers and storage devices via Prism, a single management screen. “Due to such an advantage, it is possible to find the cause and shorten the time required to resolve it,” thus preventing detrimental impact to business services.
Significant improvement in log collection system and enhanced daily operational efficiencies
“We can check the resource utilization of Splunk solution in real-time. Also, despite the increase in log collection, the quality of security control has improved significantly by enabling smooth log search and analysis.”
Nutanix also “reduces the burden on administrators because the tasks required for increasing system performance and capacity are simple and automated.” With Prism, “you can perform tasks such as creating/ deleting VM, allocating resources, or upgrading. In the past, we had to adopt or develop a separate solution in order to create such an environment.”
Improved VDI performance for secure and stable remote working for 200 persons
In order to provide a secure and stable remote working environment for its employees working overseas and from home, Korea Eximbank is running Splunk’s integrated log collection system via Citrix Xen Desktop on Nutanix HCI to serve more than 200 persons.
The VDI system provided the same ease of management and operation. Chun elaborated, “SAN storage was used for the OS region of VM and each user data region was operated by adopting separately as NAS storage. With the current Nutanix HCI, two types of software-based storage can be freely configured and changed without introducing separate physical storage, helping to ensure a stable teleworking environment.”
NEXT STEPS
Undergoing digital transformation, Korea Eximbank intends to offer more digital, non-face-to-face financial services to local and overseas companies and customers and establish a secure, powerful system to prevent any cyber threats. It plans to adopt newest technology while complying with regulations by embracing hybrid cloud strategy.
“We strive to achieve both regulation compliance and Fourth Industrial Revolution technology. In order to do so, we have chosen hybrid cloud as our digital transformation strategy and Nutanix has been very helpful in achieving this,” stated Chun.