The Challenge
The bank's core banking system was hosted across three ageing server rooms in different buildings — none of which met RBI's IT governance guidelines for critical banking infrastructure. Power redundancy was insufficient, cooling capacity was stretched, and the network architecture created single points of failure that had caused two major outages in the preceding 18 months.
With the bank's digital banking user base growing at 40% year-on-year and the RBI tightening its IT risk management frameworks, the bank needed to consolidate into a single, purpose-built, RBI-compliant data center — and do so without disrupting live banking operations for their 2.4 million customers.
The project had to be completed within a 14-week window before the bank's peak Q4 transaction period. Any delay risked a compliance notification from the regulator and operational disruption during the busiest quarter.
Our Solution
UDS deployed a dedicated project team of 12 engineers and consultants for this engagement. We began with a comprehensive infrastructure audit of the existing server rooms, mapping every workload, dependency, and network connection before drafting the new data center architecture.
The new facility was designed to Tier III-equivalent standards: N+1 power redundancy with dual UPS systems and a diesel generator with automatic changeover, precision air conditioning with hot/cold aisle containment, a raised floor environment, and a fully redundant core network using MPLS connectivity to all 400+ branch offices.
Migration was executed in 11 carefully sequenced phases, each scheduled during low-transaction overnight windows. Our team implemented a parallel-run strategy for core banking workloads, ensuring that both the legacy and new environments ran simultaneously for a validation period before final cutover. This approach eliminated the risk of data loss and minimised customer impact.
Post-deployment, UDS established a 24/7 NOC monitoring contract covering the entire infrastructure stack — servers, storage, network, and environmental systems — with escalation SLAs meeting RBI's requirements for critical banking infrastructure.
Results
- Project delivered on time in 14 weeks, ahead of the Q4 banking season deadline
- 99.97% infrastructure uptime achieved in the first year of operations
- Zero customer-impacting incidents during the migration process
- Full RBI IT governance compliance achieved, clearing the bank's regulatory audit
- 400+ branches connected to the consolidated data center with MPLS WAN
- 43% reduction in total infrastructure operational costs through consolidation
Technologies Used
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UDS has delivered data center solutions for banks, NBFCs, and financial institutions across India. Whether you need a new data center build, infrastructure consolidation, or RBI compliance remediation, our team is ready to help.