Finance | COMSTAR

COMSTAR Federal Credit Union Appreciates Adonis DNS/DHCP Appliance as High Availability Solution

OVERVIEW

COMSTAR Federal Credit Union is “rooted in service”. Established in 1933, COMSTAR FCU provides banking services to over 20,000 members who reside primarily in the Washington DC Metro Area. The 60-person company embodies the financial success they want for their members - in 2004, they achieved over $167 million in assets. COMSTAR FCU offers its members a variety of banking options such as Personal Credit Union, a free Internet-based home banking service that includes a secure browser interface for online bill payments, and serves as an invaluable portal for a host of other account transactions and information. They are a full-service financial institution with a wide array of competitive products and services and sustainability. The company continues to search for ways to serve their members more efficiently through their sponsor affiliations.

BACKGROUND

Stephen Jones, VP of Information Systems at COMSTAR FCU, had to manage DNS operations through an ISP. Waiting for the ISP to make changes to the DNS records was always of great concern, as he wondered if the changes would be done accurately and in a timely manner. Jones knew that for his company to provide a high availabilitysolution that would offer customers a higher level of service, the company had to provide their members with uninterrupted access to the COMSTAR FCU Internet Banking Servers.

SOLUTION

“By deploying the Adonis DNS Appliances [from BlueCat Networks] we have been able to isolate the IP addresses provided for our critical servers at our co-locations by having them correspond to the name server at each physical location,” said Jones. “That, coupled with short TTL’s for each record, enables us to have a seamless failover from one location to the other in the event one of our Internet connections should fail. Our Name Server, using the Internet connection that is down, will simply be unavailable, and is thus unable to distribute the addresses on the subnet that are affected by the outage. [This leaves] the Name Server at our co-location to answer all queries with the address set that is currently available, and if both connections are working it load-balances between locations using the round-robin method.”

Jones appreciated the “intuitive nature of the Graphical User Interface” and Adonis’ easy installation and configuration. He’s no longer worried about DNS changes, because he can deal with them directly instead of contacting the ISP. Server productivity has increased, and network availability has also improved because of “co-locations that work independently. Deploying a Master Name Server in different physical locations helps us offer our members a high availability solution that should be expected from a financial institution.”

Helpful technical support from BlueCat Networks also went a long way towards convincing Mr. Jones that he’d made the right decision. “BlueCat Networks’ Customer Support helped me with the implementation and design of the DNS setup that would best accomplish our goals. The support I have received so far has been first rate and they have given me no reason to expect any less in the future.”

IMPACT

Jones is convinced that Adonis has given DNS control back to COMSTAR FCU, in addition to saving time and money. He remarked “You cannot really put a price on the peace of mind you have when you are in control and making the changes yourself!” COMSTAR FCU continues to provide the best possible service to their members. They are “rooted in service” and they keep growing.