Database maintenance sparks CommBank outage

By Liz Tay on Mar 1, 2011 11:59 AM
Filed under Software

Funds transfers stalled.

Customers of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia have been unable to transfer funds today due to issues with the bank’s database maintenance process last night.

The bank’s online banking system NetBank, customer relationship management system CommSee, BPay and phone banking channels were affected.

Some point of sales (POS) systems and ATMs were also impacted.

The bank issued status updates on its website at 9am and 11am today, apologising “for any inconvenience caused”.

A spokesman told iTnews that customers needing to undertake urgent funds transfers should visit their local branch. However, transactions would only be processed “when full service is restored”.

“Last night the CBA encountered an issue when conducting routine database maintenance,” he said.

“The CBA is working to restore service as matter urgency. Full service is expected to resume this afternoon.”

Database maintenance sparks CommBank outage

5 comments in this discussion

"Just to note @panto, all software is buggy. Some stuff wouldn't work without bugs."

By Ace

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Comments: 5

BaysNet Mar 1, 2011 12:55 PM	Anyone for a Database vulnerability Scan? Anyone? No Oh well these things can happen in normal database maintenance can't they and no one minds a bit of unscheduled maintenance do they.
Notomys Mar 1, 2011 1:46 PM	Isn't this is hundredth time we've had the CBA down because of their Oracle database. As someone who specialises in highly available databases, I'm always amused by incidents such as this one, where database vendors, especially Oracle, fall down when it comes to maintenance/upgrades. I've only encountered one vendor, Sybase, that has been capable of performing full version upgrades and maintenance online with no downtime. I guess it's the CIO's fault when they sign that million $ contract and accept that minor scheduled outage window per month. Hang on, 24x7x365 there is no scheduled outage window! Duh!
BaysNet Mar 1, 2011 4:55 PM	I think now that the ATM's are dispensing loads of extra cash we might find the "database maintenance" issue may not be an Oracle issue. Like I said before any bank that doesn't have a database vulnerability scan or database firewall in place is open to having "incidents" because thay haven't put adequate technical controls in place to mitigate the obvious risks of a large financial institution.
panto Mar 2, 2011 4:57 PM	Oracle software is buggy and no amount of scanning or security precautions will mitigate that. They have to be prepared for these kinds of outages and it will come down to their IT professionals and processes to ensure systems are back up with minimal downtime and minimal impact. Sure you can build a highly available, DR'ed database through massive redundancy (where the cost does not justify the benefits for most organizations) but that does not stop logical errors from occurring, the database is still garbage in, garbage out.
Ace Mar 2, 2011 5:50 PM	Just to note @panto, all software is buggy. Some stuff wouldn't work without bugs.