Failures in an IBM DB/2 database have caused a major
crisis at a leading Danish bank.
Key trading systems at Danske Bank ground to a halt on 10 March
and the bank was not fully operational again until 17 March, it
said in a statement released on 3 April.
IBM was unaware of four bugs in the DB/2 database, which mainly
affected payments and the trading and settlement of currencies and
securities, said Danske Bank.
The first of four IT problems the bank faced emerged after an
electrical outage during routine disc maintenance on one of the
bank's IBM disc system at its data operating installation in Ejby.
This caused data inconsistencies in its DB/2 database.
In the statement Danske Bank said, "This first software error in
DB2 database software had existed in all similar installations
since 1997, without IBM’s knowledge."
The statement went on to say that a second software error
delayed the recovery process, as several DB/2 tables could not be
started, and a third error on the system prevented recovery jobs
from being run simultaneously.
Yet another software bug stopped the corrected data from being
reloaded back into the databases. In the statement Danske said,
"This last error, which appeared on Thursday, 13 March, resulted in
new episodes of inconsistent data that had to be recreated by other
methods."
To avoid further delays in restarting the systems, the bank
decided not to wait for IBM to issue patches and used back-up data
from its operating centre in Brabrand to restart the systems.
The system was running four days after the initial failure.
However, it took Danske until 17 March to clear all transactions
that had accumulated while the system was not operational.
Danske said it would upgrade its GDPS emergency security system
(Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex) mainframe system next
month which, it said, would improve disaster recovery.
The bank implemented GDPS since the autumn of 2002, which
provides mirrored discs to supplement its existing two-centre IT
operations set-up.
In its statement Danske said, "The group is of the opinion that
the next version of GDPS, to be released in May 2003, would have
prevented the effect on operations caused by the hardware
error."