How GanZhou Bank Built a Unified DevOps PaaS Platform to Automate Operations

On November 1, 2019, the GOPS Global Operations Conference in Shanghai honored Ye Guangfang, head of GanZhou Bank's system database team, with the Operations Industry Technical Expert award.

Since 2013, the team has built a unified monitoring platform on open‑source software, launched a virtualized active‑active data center in 2014, introduced Ansible‑based automation in 2015, began developing a web‑based operations platform in 2016, and in 2017 created a unified PaaS platform using the BlueKing community edition, enabling graphical job scheduling and SaaS tool development.

In 2019, the PaaS platform successfully performed a one‑click automated disaster‑recovery drill.

Q: Please introduce yourself. A: I am a DBA with 12 years of operations experience, previously in the power industry, and I joined GanZhou Bank in 2013.

Q: How was the PaaS platform built? A: Before PaaS we had isolated tools—monitoring, ITIL, log platforms, Ansible scripts—without data sharing. The unified PaaS introduced a CMDB and job platform for centralized asset management and graphical scheduling. It also enabled iPaaS and aPaaS capabilities, allowing rapid development of SaaS applications such as cloud‑management, load‑balancing, and disaster‑recovery tools.

Q: What changes did automation bring to the team? A: Automation greatly increased efficiency, reduced operational risk, and freed time for learning and developing new tools, which in turn improved collaboration across the software lifecycle and accelerated stable releases.

Q: How does the platform affect business? A: Automated releases speed up feature upgrades, self‑healing improves high‑availability, and disaster‑recovery management enhances business continuity by enabling one‑click migration to a standby site.

Q: Describe the cloud‑management platform. A: After completing a dual‑active private cloud in 2014, 99% of systems were migrated. The platform automates resource provisioning by integrating ITIL, CMDB, and the job platform, creating VMs, installing databases or middleware, and registering assets automatically. It also provides self‑service for developers and intelligent VM distribution across two data centers based on workload and business tags.

Q: What are the characteristics of operations in small‑to‑mid‑size banks? A: Talent recruitment is hard in lower‑tier cities, operations staff are few, budgets are limited, and commercial tools are costly. Open‑source BlueKing PaaS allowed us to develop custom SaaS tools internally.

Q: What are your future plans? A: We will expand CI capabilities, promote continuous integration, and build an operations big‑data platform to research and apply AIOps.

Q: How does the award feel? A: It is an honor that motivates me to keep learning as new technologies emerge.

Q: Advice for young operations engineers? A: Master the fundamentals such as Linux, and continuously learn emerging technologies to stay versatile.

Overall, Ye Guangfang’s interview showcases GanZhou Bank’s journey in building an automated DevOps PaaS platform, the challenges faced by smaller banks, and the transformative impact of DevOps on enterprise operations.