CASE STUDY: Hitachi Data Systems / University of Utah Health Services Center
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Industry: Education and Health Services Solution: Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform Model USP100 McDATA edge switches and core directors Externally attached Hitachi Thunder 9585V™ ultra high-end and Thunder 9520V™ workgroup modular storage systems |
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The University of Utah Hospital opened its doors to serve the local community in July 1965.This single facility has grown into what is now the University of Utah Health Sciences Center (UUHSC), which consists of both health services providers and educational institutions, including community clinics, the University of Utah School of Medicine, academic colleges, and various institutes and centers.
The IT infrastructure for UUHSC supports more than 285 health sciences applications representing a broad range of clinical, financial, and academic information that is critical to the operations of the center’s various facilities.
Charged with the stewardship of vital patient information, UUHSC has to ensure that applications and information are available on a 24/7 basis and that patient confidentiality is protected—all in compliance with regulations governing the exchange of health care information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. Over a brief five-year span, the demands on the UUHSC storage platform grew from 1TB of data on two servers to over 47TB of data on 60 servers.
Service Interruptions Threaten Mission-critical Operations
Jim Livingston, Director of the UUHSC Data Resource Center and a Technology Architect, recognized that the current storage infrastructure could no longer support UUHSC’s exponential data growth.The Data Resource Center was managing multiple storage area network (SAN) devices connected to various Hitachi and non-Hitachi storage systems with significant unused or “stranded” storage capacity. In addition to wasted disk space and a labor-intensive SAN requiring extensive network management support, the storage environment was not tiered, so all data—regardless of its importance and function—was allocated to expensive storage resources.
“Inefficient information management was definitely creating a bottleneck that severely limited data availability,” Livingston says and notes the situation’s gravity.“We are a 24/7 operation—access to information can literally save a life.”
Disaster recovery was suffering as well, since the brief window for planned downtime was inadequate for backing up the system’s massive amount of data. Although UUHSC was very pleased with the performance and reliability of its Hitachi storage systems, it needed a comprehensive solution that would use storage resources more efficiently while also allowing for cost-effective growth. Livingston’s challenge was to completely redesign UUHSC’s storage architecture and to do it quickly and cost-effectively.
Trusted Vendor Delivers a Flawless Implementation
Working with his “best and brightest IT talent,” Livingston and his evaluation team developed a matrix of key criteria to evaluate five vendors who participated in a stringent competitive bid process. The team selected the robust Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform as the architectural foundation for the new storage solution, a redesigned SAN fabric, and Hitachi storage management software.
“The decision was actually pretty easy, since only Hitachi Data Systems met all of our selection criteria,”explains Livingston. Faced with growing data availability issues, Livingston and his team decided to forego a pilot program.The result? “The migration to the Universal Storage Platform has been flawless—probably the smoothest migration I have ever experienced,” says Livingston.
Through a phased consolidation strategy, the Universal Storage Platform was brought online at the end of 2004. By mid-2005, all external storage will be connected to the Universal Storage Platform. Applications currently accessing data on Hitachi 7700E and Hitachi Thunder 9200™ systems will connect only to model USP100 using a single management interface.The new infrastructure supports the ability to tier data location residency between internal Universal Storage Platform storage, external fibre storage, and external SATA storage— based on application requirements. The software vendor of a critical application at UUHSC mandates that data for the application resides on an IBM ESS 2105 system. One of the final consolidation projects will be to externally attach the ESS 2105—both satisfying the vendor requirement and also allowing UUHSC to manage and administer their entire environment through a single set of tools and as a single logical entity.
UUHSC also elected to replace its SAN fabric with four McDATA Sphereon Fabric Switches and two McDATA Intrepid 6000 Series Directors to simplify cable switching and facilitate future growth.The final phase of the project will be to centralize all storage management tools through a single management console.
Powerful Performance and Virtualization Deliver High Availability
Because the Universal Storage Platform enables massive consolidation and aggregation across disparate platforms, it creates a reliable and cost-effective foundation for data lifecycle management at UUHSC. Leveraging the thirdgeneration Hitachi Universal Star Network™ crossbar switch architecture, the Universal Storage Platform supports top speed—81GB/sec internal bandwidth and two million I/O transactions per second— delivering the high level of performance that UUHSC requires in system that supports more than 9000 users.And with Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication software services, UUHSC can replicate large volumes of information for backup, testing, or disaster recovery— ensuring that mission-critical operations remain uninterrupted.
Single Management Console Lowers TCO
Once the implementation of the Universal Storage Platform is completed, Livingston and his team will have all the software functions they need to manage a virtual machine through a single management console.“We plan to conduct a proof-ofconcept analysis to assess the total cost of ownership over the next year and a half,” says Livingston.“We are building a system that I believe will not only save the university money, but also protect the safety of our patients and the health of our institution.”
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation
Corporate Headquarters
750 Central Expressway
Santa Clara,California 95050-2627
U.S.A.
Phone: 1 408 970 1000
www.hds.com
info@hds.com
Asia Pacific and Americas
750 Central Expressway
Santa Clara,California 95050-2627
U.S.A.
Phone: 1 408 970 1000
info@hds.com
Europe Headquarters
Sefton Park
Stoke Poges
Buckinghamshire SL2 4HD
United Kingdom
Phone:+ 44 (0)1753 618000
info.eu@hds.com
