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BENEFITS: Backup performance increased by more than fifty percent. Time allocated to managing tape archival decreased significantly.

THE CUSTOMER: Edward Hospital and Health Services is a full-service medical center serving several communities west of Chicago. The organization operates out of 24 locations, handles approximately 434,000 patient visits each year, and manages the services of 800 physicians. Edward Hospital, located in Naperville, Ill., offers comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services for primary care, cardiac medicine, reproductive health, cancer care, emergency medicine and many other specialties.

THE CHALLENGE - BACKUPS TAKING TOO LONG: Edward Hospital had outgrown the tape library that served its pool of 70 Windows servers and its MEDITECH healthcare information system. Backups were taking more than 24 hours, which meant the organization was not getting a complete backup every day. Not having a copy of the most recent data—which included dictations from doctors, strips from EKGs, financial information, and scheduling information—could present serious implications for the organization. In addition, tape management issues were consuming staff time and the lengthy backup window was affecting application performance.

With data growing at a significant rate, the organization knew that these issues were only going to compound. To prepare for the anticipated data growth and ensure that its data was adequately protected, Edward Hospital turned to Datalink to design a solution.

THE SOLUTION - UPGRADE TAPE TECHNOLOGY AND EVENTUALLY MIGRATE TO DISK/TAPE COMBINATION: After assessing the environment and the unique needs of Edward Hospital, Datalink presented the organization with a couple of options from which to choose. In particular, Datalink sized the environment to recommend a solution that would be capable of handling future growth while also supporting the sometimes complex product and environment certification requirements mandated in the health care industry. “I really like the fact that Datalink doesn’t just come in and push the highest cost product,” described John Ciarlette, network engineer for Edward Hospital. “They recommend what they consider the best solution. They don’t just automatically propose what we have in-house. They want us to get the best system possible.”

The hospital ultimately decided to first get its backup operation under control by replacing the current tape library with an ADIC Scalar® enterprise library and upgrading tape and tape drive technology. The next phase will involve fortifying the data protection architecture through data tiering. The hospital will incorporate virtual tape for recent backups while using traditional tape to archive offsite. The library implemented in this first phase integrates advanced diagnostic services, library resource, and I/O management functions inside the library, making it easy to integrate with disk–based backup solutions in the future.

THE BENEFITS - INCREASED DATA PROTECTION AND EASE OF MANAGEMENT: “With the new tape library, we have decreased our backup time by 12-16 hours,” said Ciarlette, noting that backups now easily fit within the backup window. This provides assurance that the hospital will have the data it needs in the event of a disaster. Or, for less urgent situations such as a user needing to access the backup copy of a recent file, the hospital now always has a backup copy readily available from the evening before.

From a management perspective, the solution has also eliminated time-consuming tasks for IT staff. “For our Windows servers, we used to have to take out anywhere from seven to 30 tapes each day and archive them
to another location before we recycled them,” explained Ciarlette. Now—because the new library has so much more capacity—the organization is able to keep those tapes within the library. Similarly, with the MEDITECH system, IT staff devoted about a half hour each day to removing and archiving nine tapes. Now, the process for retrieving these tapes is much simpler and it takes only a couple minutes. And because the new tape and drive technology holds more data, there are only two to three tapes to retrieve.

Overall, the solution has allowed Edward Hospital to greatly improve the efficiency of its organization and ensure protection of its valuable data. “It’s been a smooth process and provided a vast improvement,” Ciarlette said.

BACKUP OPTIMIZATION AUDIT:
To make sure that the backup operation was running as efficiently as possible and reduce the risk of operational failures and interoperability issues, Datalink also performed a Backup Optimization Audit for Edward Hospital. The audit involved a Datalink engineer spending a day at Edward Hospital interviewing key personnel, running scripts, and gathering raw data to discover pain points around the backup operation.

The audit reflected Datalink’s experience and best practices, providing Edward Hospital with in-depth, useful information that it likely would not have had the resources to gather on its own. “Datalink looked at what areas were going well and where potential vulnerabilities existed,” said Ciarlette. “They helped identify some issues that needed to be looked at and we’ve been able to improve our backup process as a result.”

Following the analysis, Datalink presented Edward Hospital with a detailed written report that summarized the state of the backup operation. The report documented firmware, drivers, software and O/S versions, and patch verification. The analysis also included detailed information on backup success and failure rates (including most common failures) and whether the backup catalog was properly protected. In addition, Datalink pinpointed configuration detail (such as notification, directive and saveset) to help determine overall system utilization. Finally, Datalink held a meeting to go over the findings in more depth and present top line recommendations for how to improve system reliability and performance.

LOCATION: Naperville, Illinois

KEY SOLUTION COMPONENTS: Upgraded tape library, drives, and tape technology. Performed Backup Utilization Audit to ensure maximum system performance.

DATALINK PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: Analysis, Design, Implementation, Support

INDUSTRY: Healthcare