Background & Client Challenges
A leading Tier 1 bank in Kenya needed a highly available, resilient, and scalable virtual infrastructure to support critical banking operations, including:
- Digital banking platforms
- Payment processing systems
- Internal enterprise applications
- Centralized management and improved service availability
Operating across two data centres in Nairobi, the bank faced challenges in achieving a unified virtualization environment that could:
- Ensure zero-downtime failover
- Guarantee continuous service availability
- Strengthen disaster recovery readiness
- Centralize management of compute, storage, and workloads
The bank required a trusted ICT partner with deep expertise in VMware virtualization, enterprise IT infrastructure, and data centre solutions.
Why Telenet Solutions Limited Was Selected
Telenet Solutions was chosen for its proven capabilities in enterprise virtualization and VMware deployments, offering:
- Expertise in VMware virtualization and data-centre engineering
- Successful track record deploying VMware environments for enterprise workloads
- Knowledge of high-availability and disaster recovery architectures
- 24/7 technical support
- Strong technical certifications and an excellent industry reputation
Solution Overview: VMware Stretched Cluster Implementation
Telenet Solutions designed and deployed a VMware Stretched Cluster across the bank’s two production data centres, providing:
Active-Active Data Centre Architecture
- Both sites operate simultaneously with synchronized virtualization resources
- Integration with VMware vSphere and vCenter Server
VMware vSAN Stretched Cluster
- Shared storage across both data centres
- Automated data protection through mirroring
- Zero-RPO architecture
Cross-Site High Availability (HA) & vMotion
- Automatic failover during host or site failure
- Seamless workload mobility across data centres
Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Enhancements
- Sub-minute failover times
- Elimination of manual disaster recovery interventions
- Continuous availability of banking workloads
Project Deliverables
- Infrastructure assessment and gap analysis
- Design and sizing of VMware Stretched Cluster
- Installation, configuration, and integration
- Failover simulation and testing
- Knowledge transfer and training
Outcomes & Impact
- 100% service continuity for critical banking systems
- Near-zero RPO and RTO
- Reduced operational costs and improved efficiency
- Enhanced performance, scalability, and cyber-resilience
- Better customer experience through uninterrupted digital services
Technologies Used
- VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus
- VMware vCenter Server
- VMware vSAN software-defined storage
- Dell Enterprise Servers (vSAN Ready Nodes)
- Fabric and IP networking stack
