Banking giant relies on Viewdata

In order to achieve their vision, HSBC turned to Viewdata, an Apple Solution Expert for Server and Storage. Apple Solution Experts are independent service providers who specialise in helping businesses large and small purchase, install, learn and support Apple-based solutions. HSBC's solution is disarmingly simple: a dual processor Xserve attached to a 7TB Xserve RAID sits within the office tower itself, and an identical set-up sits at a secure location off-site. Whatever happens on the system at the office is mirrored on the external resource via a 100Mb link, providing off-site back-up should anything happen to the systems or building in London. As and when circumstances dictate, the technology gives the bank's employees access to their marketing collateral from any external location.

In addition, both the server and the RAID have been configured to handle system problems or human errors that might interfere with the network. "There are multiple drives, so if anything happens, it will switch to the second drive in the server and continue to work", explains Paul Scott, technical sales manager at Viewdata. "The RAID has also been split in half so one side will continue to provide data if there's a problem with the other side". In the event of a major hardware failure, or the loss of both RAID drives, the second off-site server will deliver data through the same IP address. For Sawyer and his colleagues, this means they will experience unbroken service no matter what happens. And in the event of a major problem, they can recover their work from just one hour ago.

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