Royal Bank of Scotland's cheque system falls because of EDS mainframe failure

The Royal Bank of Scotland's cheque clearing system fell over on the 15th December after a massive mainframe failure at HP Enterprise Services (formally EDS).

An IBM Z10 at HP Enterprise Services's site in Stockley Park, near London apparently failed because microcode fixes had not been applied. The vendor's disaster recovery plan saw processes switched to an IBM Z10 in Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire, but this machine also failed to work, according to a report in UK technical journal. “The Register”.

The problem affected several large customers, including RBS, which saw its cheque clearing system go down for at least 12 hours, causing a huge backlog, says the Register, citing "insiders".

EDS was acquired in a $13.9 billion deal last year by HP, which promptly revealed plans to axe over 24,000 jobs worldwide.

According to “The Register” the Stockley Park hardware team, who would have made the microcode fixes, have all been made redundant, with a similar problem facing the Mitcheldean site.