Deutsche Bundesbank - EFI project
From Codtech
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Project background
Deutsche Bundesbank business operation characteristics
The Deutsche Bundesbank is the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was established in 1957 as the sole successor to the two-tier central bank system which comprised the Bank deutscher Länder and the Land Central Banks. At the time, the Land Central Banks were legally independent bodies. Together, the institutions in the central bank system bore responsibility for the German currency from 20 June 1948, when the Deutsche Mark was introduced, until the Deutsche Bundesbank was founded.
The Regional Offices of the Deutsche Bundesbank (formerly known as Land Central Banks) are now responsible for the Bundesbank's functions in one or more of Germany's federal states. The Bundesbank's headquarters is in Frankfurt am Main, where some 2,960 of the Bundesbank's total staff of nearly 14,240 are employed.
As a result of the Bundesbank's becoming part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), the need to restructure became increasingly evident. The Bundesbank's organisational structure was changed by means of the Seventh Act Amending the Bundesbank Act, which came into effect on 30 April 2002. The Bundesbank's decision-making body is the Executive Board. It comprises the President, the Vice-President and six other members. Its mandate is to govern and manage the Bundesbank.
The Board has prepared an organisational statute to establish how responsibilities are shared out among the Board members and to determine the tasks which may be delegated to the Regional Offices. The members of the Board are all appointed by the President of the Federal Republic. The President, the Vice-President and two other members are nominated by the German Federal Government and the other four members are nominated by the Bundesrat (the upper house of Parliament) in agreement with the Federal Government.
The Bundesbank consists of its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and nine Regional Offices. These Regional Offices are located in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Mainz, Munich and Stuttgart. Subordinated to the Regional Offices are 66 branches located in the larger towns in Germany. They carry out the Bundesbank's business with the credit institutions and the public authorities in their respective areas. Each Regional Office is headed by a President, who is subject to the authority of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank.
The Deutsche Bundesbank is a Federal institution with legal personality under public law. It is represented in and out of court by the Executive Board.
EFI - BASIS TC
The workstation computers in the Deutsche Bundesbanks branches will be migrated to a new system basis BASIS TC (Bundesbank Arbeitsplatz Services für Inbetriebnahme und Softwarebereitstellung Thin Client (Bundesbank workstation services for the operation and software provisioning of thin client)) as part of the EFI (Ersatzinvestition Filialinfrastruktur (branch infrastructure replacement investment)) project. This system is based on PXES Universal Linux Thin Client.
A branchs infrastructure is characterised by the following features.
- Links to two central computer centres via a WAN connection with a low bandwidth (~ 512 KBit/s, 1 MBit/s)
- Applications made available via Terminal Server in a Citrix MetaFrame environment
- No local server infrastructure
Proven approach
The PXES Universal Linux Thin Client Value Proposition
PXES Universal Linux Thin Client has been implementing thin client solutions for 3 years, and currently service over 100,000 seats as of January 2005. Deriving from our experience and learning, there are six main advantages over other competing solutions:
- PXES Universal Linux Thin Client permits to standardize on the software platform concealing the underlying hardware
- The minimal size of the PXES Universal Linux Thin Client allows an efficient and reliable network boot.
- PXES Universal Linux Thin Client is Open Source
- PXES Universal Linux Thin Client approach doesn't use NFS1 making it ideal to access Microsoft Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe with no need of deploying a Unix/Linux NFS server or accessing services over low speed connections presents in WAN (Wide Area Networks) or Internet VPN (Virtual Private Network) environments.
- PXES Universal Linux Thin Client requires no local devices, such diskette, cd-rom or hard disks, this dramatically reduces the TCO with clients as thin as possible.
- PXES Universal Linux Thin Client read only nature reduces the virus and security incidents in your network to a minimum
Deutsche Bundesbanks Objectives
Deutsche Bundesbank intends to launch a secure, reliable and stand alone thin client solution, with the ability to run most demanded local applications and technologies such as:
- Citrix Metaframe
- Ethernet and Token Ring support
The immediate goal of this exercise is to launch a solution that will, at minimum, provide secure server access to Workstations located in the company Local Area Network. Because Token Ring is not supported on the standard PXES release corresponding drivers were migrated to PXES to enable Token Ring support.
Benefits to Deutsche Bundesbank of this approach
The extraordinary security achieved through the read only nature of the PXES Universal Linux Thin Client images can prevent almost any intended and unintended access to system properties and settings.
Among the most relevant benefits:
- Secure and robust environment, providing protection for both Deutsche Bundesbank and Workstation users
- Easy to deploy, install and maintain (plug and play)
- Very fast boot process
- Fault tolerant
- Cost effective
Additionally, Deutsche Bundesbank obtains the traditional benefits of thin clients and PXES Universal Linux Thin Client.
Technical benefits
From the technical point of view the benefits that thin clients yield, arise from two simple concepts: centralization and simplification. By centralizing we can put together all of the computing power, storage, applications and data. This is called Server Centric computing. The applications can be run on a server cluster to minimize service disruption.
As it has a single point of administration at the servers, this centralization becomes more efficient than the distributed solution. There's only one single point to:
- change configurations
- do updates
- do backups and any other administrative tasks
- control security
By simplifying the IT infrastructure we can reduce the associated costs of labor and management and then the corresponding TCO, as we have seen before.
This is a totally scalable solution and when more resources are needed they are added to the servers.
Economical benefits
From the economical point of view the benefits are many and the solution is cost effective. There's now a single point of investment in the server and the solution could be built on the existing assets.
It significantly reduces the budget spent on individual desktop maintenance and dramatically reduces the Total Cost of Ownership.
As showed in research conducted by the Gartner Group the yearly TCO of a networked desktop PC can be as much as USD $8000.
And this can be reduced, using the thin client solution, by 45 to 54% over a five-year period. On occasions this cut can even reach 75%.
The savings are even greater, as thin clients outperform the life expectancy of a typical desktop computer by many years, at least twice as much.
Administrators benefits
as we mentioned before, the solution has only one administration point which greatly simplifies the daily tasks. Software updates will not longer be a headache. For example, having a cluster of servers in need of an upgrade, we could split the cluster into two groups, leaving one group operational ,perform the upgrade of the other, test it, and once the tests are passed, the server cluster to which thin clients are connected can be changed instantly. The whole company or institution will be using the new software immediately. This practice increases service availability.
Remote locations, branch offices or stores can be cleaned out and all of its servers can be relocated, further reducing the TCO.
It is a well known fact that Wells Fargo Bank reduced its branch offices TCO up to 75% using thin clients and centralizing servers. Furthermore, the server centralization is a great step towards implementation of advanced technologies. Directory Services and Single Sign On, which are often overlooked, because of the problems involved in deploying these technologies in a huge installed desktop base, can now be implemented with a minimum effort.
Users benefits
In addition to the many advantages that we previously mentioned, the thin client deployment is unnoticeable for the end user. The thin client looks and performs like a traditional desktop computer and implies a considerable improvement of the working environment.
One of the most noticeable enhancements is the totally quiet and cool operation. Furthermore, the user's work is not disrupted, something that as unbelievable as it may seem, cannot be achieved using native tools.
With this solution there's no need for the user to switch back and forth between environments. The performance seen in running applications knows no precedent.
Users, once accustomed to dealing with slow and swapping local applications, will soon perceive the benefit of the same application running on really powerful servers. An additional gain is the user's desktop virtualization that enables access not only from the desktop computer but also from any location on the Internet.
The stateless nature of the virtual session allows the user to close a session while the launched programs are still running. Later, in the same or another location, the user can reconnect to the same session where those programs have continued to run immutably.
Training course
As part of the inception of these technologies at Deutsche Bundesbank, a training course and workshop was given.
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