Strengthening cyber resilience with future-proof storage

Headquartered in Greater Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, First Commonwealth Federal Credit Union is a not-for-profit, member-owned financial cooperative managing over $1.4 billion in assets. Recognized nationally as a leader in financial strength, corporate social responsibility, and banking inclusivity, it returns profits directly to members through better rates, lower fees, and community investment.

First Commonwealth’s members expect round-the-clock access to their accounts, cards, and services. To meet this expectation, the credit union runs multiple mission-critical workloads, from check imaging, document management, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to the reporting databases that drive strategic planning. Delivering consistently high levels of service requires storage and disaster recovery infrastructure built for resilience, performance, and scale.

With a disaster recovery service contract renewal approaching, First Commonwealth’s IT team re-evaluated its existing approach and identified a potential short-term risk. The disaster recovery solution in question relied on system replication at the VMware hypervisor level rather than the storage level. Its long-term viability was uncertain because the provider’s ability to continue to offer VMware integration was not guaranteed.

There were also operational shortcomings with the existing system. Replicated data passed through a shared facility that its IT team did not fully control, which made hypervisor version compatibility a persistent issue. For example, when the credit union wanted to update its VMware hypervisor, it could be blocked from doing so if the hosting provider could not support the upgrade without affecting other tenants. The complexity of its storage infrastructure added to the credit union’s frustration. Without an in-house storage specialist, First Commonwealth relied on a professional services firm for routine management tasks and software upgrades.

First Commonwealth saw the upcoming contract renewal as a chance to build for the long term. It wanted full control of both ends of the disaster recovery environment, real-time protection across a broader application estate, and storage simple enough for a lean IT team to manage without external support.

First Commonwealth evaluated multiple storage vendors but found the same dependence on hypervisor-level replication. Everpure Resilience service with FlashArray stood apart as the only solution that offered direct replication of virtual machines (VMs) between two storage systems, removing the need to rely on the VMware hypervisor layer for replication. 

Mason L. Reimert, Assistant Vice President of IT Infrastructure at First Commonwealth, explains: “We assessed every option on the market. Almost every solution required the same replication approach we already had, which didn’t address the risk that VMware would change the terms of its deal with our third-party DR vendor. Everpure Resilience service gave us the ability to side-step that risk by replicating our VMware landscape directly between storage arrays.”

As a cyber resilience service model, Everpure Resilience service positions the control plane in the cloud, while all data stays within First Commonwealth’s data centers. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Reimert. “Our data stays secure and sovereign on our own sites, but we get cloud-based management for everything else. This also adds resilience because the cloud-based control plane is independent from our main infrastructure, so it would not be affected by any local outage.”

First Commonwealth deployed FlashArray at two colocated data centers, one in Pennsylvania and a second in Maine, connected by a dedicated dark fiber link. By installing FlashArray, the credit union consolidated multiple storage tiers and up to 10 rack units into a 3U, all-flash footprint at each site, simplifying the environment before replication was introduced.

Lightweight on-premises agents connect each FlashArray to Pure1®, the Everpure cloud-hosted management console, enabling robust, continuous replication between the two sites. Foundational services such as network management, user authentication, and directory services run at both locations, so they're always available regardless of which site is active. 

Transactional workloads, such as check imaging, document processing, CRM, and reporting databases, now replicate continuously and come online immediately at the recovery site if Everpure Resilience service detects an outage. The use of immutable and indelible SafeMode™ Snapshots adds protection against ransomware by preventing backups from being encrypted or deleted.

First Commonwealth was among the first Everpure customers globally to deploy Everpure Resilience service in a VMware ESX-to-VMware ESX configuration—rather than VMware ESX-to-AWS—and Everpure product management worked directly with Reimert throughout the implementation.

“The deployment was a true team effort,” says Reimert. “Whenever I clicked a button and wasn’t sure what would happen, the product director would just jump in, ask what I needed, and resolve it. That hands-on support made everything go smoothly, especially for a first-of-a-kind deployment like ours."

Since going live with Everpure Resilience service and FlashArray, First Commonwealth has doubled the number of business systems under real-time disaster recovery protection, extending coverage from approximately 36% to 72% of its VM environment. The platform also maintains a near-zero RPO across check imaging, document processing, CRM, and reporting systems. “We can now be confident that even our most transactional workloads can be recovered with minimal data loss,” says Reimert. “We simply didn’t have such a high level of confidence with our previous solution.”

Failover and failback times have also shortened since go-live. First Commonwealth is now building automation workflows that will run the entire failover sequence—including networking, firewall, and Domain Name System (DNS) changes—from a single trigger while also streamlining disaster recovery testing. "For it to take one person's time instead of three is a real improvement, especially with a team our size; that's hours we can put back into member-facing projects," says Reimert.

FlashArray has cut the rack space each site requires by two-thirds, with corresponding reductions in power consumption. The reduced footprint also frees valuable physical capacity for future growth while simplifying the data center environment.

"Simplicity was a real deciding factor for us," says Reimert. "Our team can handle everything from upgrades to day-to-day management without outside help. That's exactly what we were looking for."

With cyber resilience and storage infrastructure no longer consuming the team’s bandwidth, First Commonwealth can focus on expanding digital services, improving member experience, and continuing to grow. The credit union now has the operational foundation to pursue new initiatives without worrying about whether its infrastructure can keep pace.

"With Everpure, we have a platform we can grow with," says Reimert. "That lets us focus on what we're here to do—delivering exceptional service and returning value to our members."