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Founded in 1922, Mid America Bank (NASDAQ; MAFB) offers a wide range of banking services, including checking, savings and money market accounts, as well as mortgage, home equity and auto loans. Affiliate companies handle insurance, securities brokerage and real estate development. MAF Bancorp, Incorporated is a registered savings and loan holding company that is primarily engaged in the consumer banking offices throughout Chicago and Milwaukee and their surrounding areas, the Bank is the largest independent thrift in Illinois and 11th in deposit market share in the Chicago area and 5th largest in the Milwaukee area. MAF Bancorp is also engaged in the single family residential real estate development business through MAF Developments, Incorporated; another wholly owned subsidiary.
About the Data Center
In 2005, MidAmerica Bank recognized a need to revamp and upgrade its data protection scheme utilizing branch back up servers. Mid America’s explosive growth to 82 branches by 2007 required a new storage are network (SAN) to integrate with the branch backup as well as dramatic scaling in the data center facility and equipment. Visioning, design, construction and commissioning were complete in 2 short years. Recent United States Justice Department requirements mandated enclosed, locked cabinets for banking applications’ IT equipment. This was one of the parameters that had to be considered within the project requirements; others being: 100% up time during the entire, difficult, phased construction process.
Challenges
The immediate challenge was to design and remodel the data center; migrating the old Cat 5 infrastructure to a new Category 6/ Fiber solution with redundancy systems. Providing zero loss to data or power, while adhering to the constraints of the specified budget and 100% up time of banking functions during the major reconstruction phased project was key to the success of the installation. Before the upgrade to the data center, the accumulated cable in the under floor path had become so congested that the air flow was severely compromised.
A Blended Solution
Mike Woodworth of Inteck Systems, a Molex Certified Installer, contacted Darrell Brown from Brook Electric’s data team. Because the cable and connectivity requirements were so demanding; a blended solution of Molex cable and connectivity, Hoffman enclosures and
Geist power strips were chosen. Mark Peterschmidt of Benchmark Technical Systems facilitated the implementation of this multiple manufacturer solution. The planned upgrade eliminated all data, telecom and electrical from the raised floor path with a re-routed overhead network path. The original floor cooling system was not functioning properly due to the old abandoned cable stored in the floor. All of this was removed but not before the overhead network path was 100% fully functional. The new overhead network path enabled MidAmerica Bank to adhere to the hot/cold aisle performance scheme.
Outstanding Teamwork
Paul Stonchus, First Vice President/ Data Center Manager of Mid America Bank said there were a number of factors behind the decision to select Molex: “The Molex cable and connectivity provided a budget friendly, high performance solution for our comprehensive requirement and the outstanding teamwork between Molex, Brook and Inteck made for a seamless installation… even with all the phase-over challenges.”
The Molex Solution
A Molex Category 6 cabling system solution was chosen for its product breadth, end-to-end solution, project timeline assurances and the 25 year System Performance Warranty. The project called for 1250 drops, 6K feet of fiber and 450K feet of copper UTP Category 6 enhanced cable. Molex UTP connectors and modular furniture outlets were installed in the work area, while Premise Distribution Systems, Category 6 patch panels were used and labeled in the closet.
A hot aisle/cold aisle cooling facility was incorporated into the data center floor-plan and Hoffman’s Proline* Flo-tek* HCA cabinets were used to best handle heat dissipation requirements. Because these cabinets would be used for switching and server applications; a special 700mm width cabinet was provided to handle cord and cable management. The Molex product line worked well inside the special cabinets.
Mike Woodworth, President and Owner of Inteck Systems added; “In a design- build environment we had a number of alternatives to choose from and find that the value provided by Molex was Best In Class. The same was true of Hoffman’s cabinet solution and Geist’s power strips. Delighted customers and profitable projects result.”
Conclusion
The project was successfully completed taking only 9 months from start to finish. MidAmerica Bank’s data center with its increased bandwidth and updated infrastructure is now positioned well for today’s high capacity needs and future expansion.
* Proline and Flo-Tek are registered trademarks of Hoffman.
