Maimonides Medical Center, a Brooklyn NY-based and leading independent teaching hospital, has leveraged storage virtualisation to help drive staff productivity, cost savings and better operational performance. The flexibility of DataCore’s software architecture has enabled Maimonides to meet the dynamic range of performance, availability and capacity growth demands needed to stay ahead of compliance regulations and their ever-changing applications and system requirements.
“As a result of DataCore’s software-defined storage platform, we have seen significant savings in hardware and personnel costs, while increasing the performance of applications,” said Gabriel Sandu, CTO at Maimonides Medical Center. “DataCore’s SANsymphony-V allows us to manage all these discrete systems from different vendors seamlessly and without compatibility issues, which gives us tremendous negotiating power to drive down costs.”
The hospital has been able to meet change head-on and has improved productivity, achieved better cost containment and consolidated online storage resources that span multiple remote locations all under the management of DataCore’s storage virtualization platform. A multitude of primary business-critical applications are under the central control of DataCore’s SANsymphony-V – including:
- GE’s imaging system (PACS)
- Numerous Oracle databases for human resources
- Microsoft SQL servers for clinical programs
- Primary databases for neonatal, geriatric, pediatric and research
- Microsoft Exchange and IBM DB2 databases that support medical records
Cost Containment and Full Asset Utilization – Courtesy of Software-defined Storage
More than 800 physicians rely on Maimonides information systems to care for patients. Before working with DataCore, the organization had a number of disparate systems not working in conjunction with each other. This ad-hoc approach decreased efficiencies and intelligence around what departments were in need of storage resources.
With all storage now managed through DataCore software, the medical center can fully leverage existing storage assets, reduce costs, and track storage consumption, as well as more efficiently budget for the future by easily identifying usage patterns. Maimonides also now utilizes previously unused storage throughout the hospital because resources are pooled and easily optimized.
Productivity Improvement: Super-charged Performance & Capacity On-demand
The intelligence and automation that DataCore’s SANsymphony-V provides reduces the work needed to manage the hospital’s petabyte of data. Maimonides now has a pool of storage that can be “served up” to each department rather than purchasing resources separately.
“DataCore’s self-tuning caching capabilities also allow Maimonides to super-charge application performance,” said Rogee Fe de Leon, head of the storage group at Maimonides Medical Center.
Risk Reduction and Metro-wide Data Protection for Continuous Availability
The hospital uses DataCore to split storage between two data centers using stretched metro-clusters and DataCore’s built-in metro-wide mirroring, enabling them to provide responsive applicati
ons and uninterrupted patient care during routine maintenance, equipment failures and facility upheaval. For example, when the hospital experienced a major power outage in one data center, the doctors, staff and patients had continuous access to their vital data from the virtualized storage pool at the redundant site. Once power was restored, the systems returned automatically to normal operations.
ons and uninterrupted patient care during routine maintenance, equipment failures and facility upheaval. For example, when the hospital experienced a major power outage in one data center, the doctors, staff and patients had continuous access to their vital data from the virtualized storage pool at the redundant site. Once power was restored, the systems returned automatically to normal operations.
Business Continuity and Non-Stop Operations
“High availability for our operations was the first and foremost reason for going with DataCore,” adds Rogee Fe de Leon. “Now, everything that is mission-critical to running the hospital is supported by DataCore. Users not only receive faster access to data, but they benefit from simpler provisioning and more server capacity as well.”
Having rock-solid business continuity remains the overriding benefit Maimonides derives from DataCore’s solution. Maimonides can now cluster applications between sites through on-demand, available storage serving remote locations. If outages occur, IT systems don’t go down with the affected site and continue providing non-stop business operations.
“Maimonides is leading by example, demonstrating how software-defined storage architectures can meet the management challenges of the modern-day data center on shrinking budgets,” said Melody Brown, vice president sales for the Americas, DataCore Software. “We congratulate Maimonides for being our first recipient of the DataCore Healthcare Innovator Award. Like Maimonides, SANsymphony-V sets the standard for flexible and trusted data storage management for the software-defined data center.”
