Client Success Story

First Bankers Trust:Strengthening Reliability in theHosting Environment
A regional commercial bank with 10 branches inwestern Illinois, First Bankers Trust also provides
hosting services for a community bank in northeast
Missouri. To reduce risk and support compliance,
the bank’s IT leadership needed to strengthen thereliability of its two data centers to improve application
access. Burwood Group was engaged to design andimplement a solution to add full high-availability (HA)
and redundancy for improved business performance.
The Challenge: Multiple Points of Potential Failure, MultipleOpportunities for Disruption“Burwood Group solved ourcore challenge of data center
overload, ensuring that ouremployees and hosting clients
could perform their work without
disruption. In addition to buildingin high availability for ourinternal applications and hosting
services, Burwood’s strategic
approach and firm understandingof the financial services
industry gave us complete
confidence in the solution.”– John Predmore
AVP, Network Administrator
First Bankers Trust Company

Smarter Solutions. Better Outcomes.

With two data centers serving banks across two states, the First Bankers
Trust’s application infrastructure was at risk of overload, with multiple
potential points of failure. Most applications were hosted on a single server
and the hosting environment was not fully high availability. A hardware
failure or natural disaster, such as a fire or tornado, resulted in downtime,
disruption, and potential security risks because the IT team had to manuallytransfer applications to a different server.
The Solution: Continuous Communications for Smooth IT
Implementation
Burwood Group was selected for its network security and technology
strategy expertise to architect a solution that would provide redundancy andhigh availability for critical application servers in the primary data center. Inaddition, the bank turned to Burwood to complete failover capabilities in thesecondary data center to expedite disaster recovery.
Burwood’s solution was built on an existing Cisco 9000 networking
infrastructure, which included FlexPod-based Cisco UCS. The infrastructure
allowed First Bankers Trust to add redundancy for its internal and hosted

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applications. Burwood used Cisco UCS B-Series Blade
Servers to virtualize the environment and run Citrix
Netscaler and HA features, including global server loadbalancing (GSLB) to automatically transfer applicationloads between servers without disrupting user workflow.
Burwood’s solution included custom health monitorsthat constantly validate functionality of each server. If aserver fails, users are either automatically transferred to
the redundant server or, if needed, the IT team manually
executes the transfer.
Working collaboratively with the bank’s IT department,
Burwood consultants drove the solution from gap analysis
through delivery and training, ensuring that the First
Bankers Trust team could effectively administer the solutionin the long term.

By replacing unreliable
system architecture witha more comprehensivesolution, the bank now
provides high availability,reliability, automatedfailover, and the ability
to address server
failures quickly, without
impacting user workflow.

Burwood Group Services•

Network Security•

Technology Strategy•

Disaster Recovery

About Burwood GroupThe Outcome: Seamless Connectivity and Enhanced
Reliability
The strategic decision to virtualize and centralize First
Bankers Trust’s computing into redundant data centerswith redundant network connectivity to every location
has significantly improved systems uptime for end users
and bank customers. By replacing unreliable systemarchitecture with a more comprehensive solution, the banknow provides high availability, reliability, automated failover,and the ability to address server failures quickly, without
impacting user workflow. The updated architecture andinfrastructure also provide robust security, an importantcredential for compliance with FDIC regulations for hosting
financial applications.
In early 2016, First Bankers Trust was recognized with anInnovations in Technology award from the Illinois Bankers
Association for implementing “innovative and scalable
business continuity and disaster recovery solutions.”

V1.0 - © 2016, Burwood Group, Inc. - All Rights Reserved

Burwood Group is a consulting firm specializing in IT
management and infrastructure solutions. We help forwardthinking technology leaders create solutions that enhancecustomer loyalty, increase profitability, and mitigate risk.
Burwood Group approaches every engagement with thedesired end-state in mind. Our consultants recognize thecritical importance of tying technology investments toorganizational priorities. Founded in 1997 and headquarteredin Chicago, Illinois, Burwood Group serves local, national,and international clients. We pride ourselves in being trusted
business advisors to clients by providing smarter solutions
that deliver better outcomes. Visit http://www.burwood.com.

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Back image credit: Trotter General Contracting Inc. www.trottercontracting.com