Customer Profile Interior Health Authority, British Columbia EMC solutions support clinical and business applications for optimized patient care and cost-efficient IT operations Responsible for one of the 10 largest health regions in Canada, British Columbia s Interior Health Authority (IHA) serves a population of over 700 thousand in 54 communities across 10 districts. Formed in 2002, IHA is the outcome of the British Columbian government s consolidation of 54 local health authorities into six multi-region healthcare organizations. For IHA s IT service organization, the massive restructuring of the province s healthcare system presented a tremendous challenge involving the unification of servers, applications, and information feeds from 183 healthcare sites and 52 data centers into an integrated whole. Already a trusted partner, EMC was brought in to help the organization address its information consolidation, management, and security needs. Today, that support continues as IHA s plans for its information infrastructure unfold. The latest EMC implementations and enhancements include a new EMC storage supported McKesson PACS system that spans three health service areas; rock-solid backup and disaster recovery; economical and highly reliable online PACS and e-mail archives; automated data movement for enhanced information lifecycle management (ILM) capability; and advanced virtualization technology for improved flexibility and cost efficiency. EMC SANs link patient information all together Prior to the restructuring, B.C. s Thompson Cariboo Shuswap health service area was successfully using an EMC Symmetrix -based SAN in Kamloops to meet the needs of a rapidly growing FUJIFILM Medical Systems Synapse PACS and other medical files. At the onset of the restructuring endeavor, another EMC Symmetrix-based SAN was deployed 200 kilometers away in IHA s new Kelowna data center to support consolidation and disaster recovery initiatives. Between the two EMC SANs, IHA was able to consolidate 52 dispersed data centers, reap substantial savings in equipment, operating costs, and personnel, and improve security because records are no longer retained at the desktop. Today, these two data centers, fully equipped with advanced EMC hardware and software technology, support the expanding IT needs of four health service areas within IHA: Thompson Cariboo Shuswap, Okanagan, East Kootenay, and Kootenay Boundary.
Within this integrated IT environment, EMC Symmetrix technology is strategic to meeting the demanding performance and availability requirements of IHA s growing mission-critical applications environment which includes an enterprise-wide MEDITECH Health Care Information System (HCIS), the FUJIFILM Medical Systems PACS, and a new McKesson PACS which is now deployed across Okanagan, East Kootenay, and Kootenay Boundary health service areas. Recently, IHA replaced its EMC Symmetrix system in Kelowna with a more powerful EMC Symmetrix DMX-3 system. The same storage upgrade is planned for the Kamloops site in the near future. This industry-leading networked storage system offers significantly more capacity and supports even better disk utilization than the older EMC Symmetrix system, enabling IHA to store more data on the same amount of disk. Its tiered-storagein-a-box design enables IHA to accommodate more applications, a wider range of service levels, and an annual data growth rate of 82 percent all with flexibility, speed, reliability, and cost efficiency. PACS is one of our major contributors to our high and sustained growth, as are an expanding number of new projects and applications, says Roy Southby, director of IT. EMC is by far the leading provider of SAN storage for PACS, allowing us to integrate with multiple vendors easily. EMC s close relationship with MEDITECH enables us to integrate and run its HCIS applications and database on EMC Symmetrix trouble-free. Advancing information lifecycle management with a tiered storage strategy A nearly full EMC Symmetrix system in Kamloops, regulations compliance, PACS expansion, a Microsoft Exchange upgrade, and a growing interest in pursuing the operational and cost benefits of ILM have all factored into IHA s deployment of EMC CLARiiON and EMC Centera storage and archive platforms. Together, these added storage tiers are enabling IHA to optimally use its EMC Symmetrix storage by freeing up much-needed space while simultaneously enhancing performance and availability for mission-critical applications. For example, EMC CLARiiON storage was recently deployed at the Kamloops site to offload less-critical applications from the EMC Symmetrix system to preserve its use for the most demanding requirements. Likewise, four mirrored EMC Centera systems, acting as both PACS backup and archive repositories at Kelowna and Kamloops data centers, make it possible for IHA to purge images over a year old from EMC Symmetrix storage for further preservation of IHA s tier-one investments. Exceptional reliability, content authenticity, easy access, and rapid recoverability also make EMC Centera archives ideally suited for complying with Canada s stringent Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) regulations. With PACS, the minimum time you have to archive images is seven years under the law, and tape-based backup is just not feasible, says Southby. If we had to restore 30 terabytes of PACS data from tape, it could take well over a month. Centera gives us a very workable and economical solution for reliably backing up, archiving, and retrieving that data within seconds. An EMC NS704 NAS gateway will soon join IHA s multi-tiered storage infrastructure to effectively yet economically support applications such as scanning. EMC Professional Services helped us develop our ILM strategy and we are very pleased with the support we have received, says Southby. Although we are still in the process of rolling out our ILM initiatives, that support has already enabled us to optimize our cost of storage.
They really worked as facilitators, adds Mike Kirby, technical architect. They didn t tell us what we needed, but rather helped us assign priorities to our applications so that we could pick the most appropriate disk for each application. We have all the infrastructure pieces and the strategy to move forward. Automated data movement with EMC DiskXtender and EmailXtender solutions An integral part of IHA s EMC Centera storage solution, EMC DiskXtender is used to automatically move fixed-content assets, generated by FUJIFILM Medical Systems and McKesson PACS applications, from the EMC Symmetrix to EMC Centera. The software allows the organization to set up policies governing the automation of that movement, which is a key functionality for effective ILM. Used in conjunction with EMC EmailXtender software, EMC Centera will also soon become the repository for Exchange e-mails over three months old that are residing on EMC Symmetrix platforms. Exchange currently has a very large database, says Southby. We ll be archiving e-mail on the Centera, so we ll be reducing the file size on the Symmetrix. We expect that this will improve system response and enable us to back up and recover more quickly. The solution is expected to help eliminate data and security risks related to individuals archiving e-mail on their own computers, and enable the IT department to provide IHA staff with virtually unlimited mailbox sizes. Internal requirements and future compliance with emerging legislation related to e-mail retention also can be easily supported using a simple, manageable format. Business continuity solutions for mission-critical data Although incremental backups for most applications are supported by tape, mission-critical MEDITECH applications are protected by EMC TimeFinder software. Through the creation of business continuance volumes (BCVs), TimeFinder allows for quick, frequent, and nondisruptive data backups for non-stop operations. TimeFinder backs up our most important MEDITECH data, which covers all of our financial information, healthcare products, electronic medical records, and more, says Southby. EMC gives us the security of knowing that we re not going to lose any data. EMC TimeFinder is used with advanced EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility/ Asynchronous (SRDF /A) software to support long-distance mirroring of MEDITECH files between Kamloops and Kelowna data centers. Sitting on the banks of Lake Okanagan, the city of Kelowna is in an area at potential risk for seismic activity. Surrounded by dense forest, this region also is vulnerable to wild fires which have on one occasion come close enough to the data center to warrant concern. Therefore, rock-solid disaster recovery between the Kelowna and Kamloops data centers is paramount. Replicating data over a gigabit Ethernet LAN, the EMC SRDF/A solution, along with EMC TimeFinder which creates BCVs of the MEDITECH data every three or four hours, is set up to quickly and reliably mirror those BCVs between the Kamloops and Kelowna data centers. EMC SRDF/A proves its worth for long-distance disaster recovery Recently, the EMC SRDF/A solution was put to the test when unexpected circumstances necessitated the movement of the entire MEDITECH farm which consisted of 30 servers and two terabytes of MEDITECH data from the Kelowna data center to the Kamloops site
where it currently resides. The entire MEDITECH environment, which requires a specific procedure for bringing down and starting up each server, was fully functional in Kamloops within five hours. EMC SRDF/A s ability to protect the consistency and integrity of data during the mirroring process also was proven with no data loss incurred during the move. To move that much data, especially MEDITECH data which is a bit different from other kinds of data, over 200 kilometers without any data loss is incredible, explains Southby. SRDF looked after all that. It doesn t drop packets and it doesn t lose data. Without the development EMC has put into their equipment and their support during the failover, we could have never achieved what we did in that short period of time. We were very pleased with the results. It s not just a matter of good technology, it s a matter of good service, and EMC has never let us down. The consultants in Calgary have done an absolutely stupendous job. The level of expertise is high and the 24x7 monitoring of our system means we don t need to worry about equipment failures. We can all sleep at night. Roy Southby Director of IT The best way to manage a complex environment From servers to switches and storage, EMC ControlCenter management software provides IHA s IT service team with a high-level view of what is happening across the infrastructure. EMC ControlCenter s automated, end-to-end performance, resource, and device management functionality, along with trend analysis capabilities, now enable IHA to optimize the use of its IT investments and accurately plan for the future. In the past, there was a lot of guesswork involved in planning and there was a tendency to either over- or under-compensate, says Southby. Now we can work out exactly what we need to budget for the following year. EMC ControlCenter software recently played a key role in quickly determining what types of disks were associated with which servers to perform the necessary testing, and to optimize performance to support the recent and successful failover from Kelowna to Kamloops. We originally designed our SRDF environment for disaster recovery and not as a live running site, so we had to take care of some performance issues which ControlCenter enabled us to easily address, says Kirby. Without this version of ControlCenter, the whole process would have been very laborious. Leveraging the benefits of virtualization Now in the early stages of implementation, VMware virtualization technology is being used to create virtual task servers to support application testing and development and for migrating historical systems. With data center space in limited supply, IHA is looking to expand its use of VMware virtualization technology to help consolidate the number of physical servers and reduce operating and management costs. It is also expected to flexibly position IHA to more easily accommodate new applications and projects without having to factor in the expense and time involved in setting up a new server.
Capitalizing on EMC Services EMC Services and its support have helped IHA address its storage management and protection challenges, speed deployment, maintain optimal operations, and maximize the benefits of EMC hardware and software solutions through onsite education and EMC Summit workshops. Choosing a more active role during the deployment of its EMC solutions, IHA s IT service organization opted to employ EMC for project management with IHA manpower. This arrangement, along with EMC training, has enabled the staff to quickly get up to speed. We re pretty isolated in Canada and far from any of the major centers, so we need to be fairly independent, says Southby. In addition, IHA has peace of mind knowing that EMC s call-home functionality is automatically and continuously monitoring the systems and can quickly resolve any problems. It s not just a matter of good technology, it s a matter of good service, and EMC has never let us down, says Southby. The consultants in Calgary have done an absolutely stupendous job. The level of expertise is high and the 24x7 monitoring of our system means we don t need to worry about equipment failures. We can all sleep at night. A perfect ten for the most important issue data protection According to Southby, the single most important thing that EMC provides IHA is the security of knowing data is protected. Also earning high marks are EMC s proven, solutions and support services which are helping the organization successfully and economically address its challenges and plan for the future. I don t often rate companies ten out of ten, says Southby. I rate EMC ten out of ten. EMC Corporation Hopkinton Massachusetts 01748-9103 1-508-435-1000 In North America 1-866-464-7381 EMC 2, EMC, EMC ControlCenter, CLARiiON, DiskXtender, EmailXtender, SRDF, Symmetrix, TimeFinder, and where information lives are registered trademarks and Centera is a trademark of EMC Corporation. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Copyright 2006 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 8/06 Customer Profile L1059.2 www.emc.com