Technical terms related to CBS

• Data Centre (DC) – The place where the central server / servers are housed.
• Disaster Recovery Site (DRS) – An alternate data centre which will act as abackup resource and ensure business continuity in case of a DC failure.
• Data Mirroring – Storage devices attached to Servers located in DC and DRS are updated on a real time basis, so that data integrity as well as availability are ensured even in case of a hardware failure. Bank’s real time data is stored in multiple devices and locations.
• Backup – Data stored in the fixed storage devices are copied on to removable storage devices / tapes and preserved for any future contingency. These backups are stored in some off-site location to avoid the damages on account of a disaster like earth quake, fire, flood etc.
• Leased Lines – These are the primary data links used for CBS networking. These are analog links on fixed yearly rentals and there are no additional usage charges.
• ISDN Lines – These are the secondary data links put to use in case of a Leased line failure. These are integrated services digital network lines which can carry various forms of information packets (data, voice and images and video) as digital signals.
• Modem – This is networking equipment used to modulate and demodulate the data signals. Computers work on digital data signals where as the leased lines can carry only the analog signals. Modems modulate (convert the digital signals to analog signals) at the transmitting end and then demodulate (Convert the analog signals to digital signals) at the receiving end.
• Switch – In a branch there can be more than one computer and these computers are networked to form a local area network (LAN) using a device called switch.
• Router – Router is another network device that connects different LANs and facilitates intelligent data transfer. Router also functions as an intelligent switching device between various connectivity channels, viz., leased line, ISDN, PSTN etc. When the primary link (LL) is down, it automatically dials the ISDN and re-establishes the network connectivity.
• Regional Cluster Centre (RCC) - Instead of taking separate links between individual branches and the data centre, branches in a geographical region are first connected to a location in that region and this location is then connected to the data centre using links of higher band width. This location is termed as a regional cluster centre. Some banks also house their regional data servers in RCC, so that in case of a total network failure between RCC and DC, branches in that region can continue to operate and also provide Any Branch Banking (ABB) facilities within the cluster