42U Helps Catholic Healthcare Partners Upgrade and Optimize Its Datacenters
42U, the nation's leading provider of datacenter and remote server management solutions, has had a successful five-year relationship with Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP), one of the largest not-for profit health systems in the United States. During these five years, 42U has helped CHP update and maintain its server technology in an ongoing effort to provide high-quality healthcare to its patients through its more than 100 organizations, including acute care hospitals, long-term care facilities, home health care programs, hospice programs, elderly housing sites, and wellness centers.
Background
In 2001, CHP examined its IS functions after acquiring a regional health system. After conducting a thorough audit of its datacenter, CHP found it needed to update its server technology and consolidate its multiple regional datacenters into two "mega" datacenters in Youngstown and Cincinnati, Ohio.
After the 2001 consolidation, today CHP's two datacenters contain a total of more than 3,000 Intel servers, including a combination of Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, and Linux, with the ability and licensing to allow as many 100 administrators to access the servers simultaneously.
CHP's Challenges And 42U's Solution
Initially, CHP's main challenges included reducing software duplication throughout its many datacenters and enabling secure remote access to its servers. In addition, CHP wanted to strengthen its data recovery ability in the event of a disaster, and implement a solution that would allow for easy and streamlined software upgrades to all equipment.
CHP selected 42U initially and has maintained its relationship with 42U because 42U's sales engineers are committed to independently determining the best solutions for customers, and its technically adept team is very knowledgeable about datacenter management solutions, including servers and KVM over IP technology.
42U's team of experienced sales engineers looked at the many possible solutions and selected Avocent's DSView software and switches for several reasons. DSView software allows multiple users per switch, has true IP connectivity, handles NT domain authentication, and allows remote access for administration of servers. Avocent switches and Digital Server Management solutions (DS1800, DSR4160, DSR4010, DSR4020, and DSR1021) are being used for desktop testing and management because they offer a scaleable solution and are upgradeable to the DSView 3 platform (a current goal).
Grant Kelley, a Sr. Systems Engineer who has worked for CHP for three years and has worked with 42U for one year, said that the 42U sales engineer assigned to CHP has been a "great help" and "tends to our needs as quickly as possible."
"DSView 3 is going to become our single point of administration for all our Intel Servers that are currently on KVM. This will allow the Intel Teams in both datacenters to become "one team" and allow us to manage our servers more efficiently," Kelley said.
Avocent's Technology Meets CHP's Challenges | Challenge 1: Consolidate Datacenters and Streamline Datacenter Management | Challenge: CHP had offices across the country and every regional system on its network had its own copy of most applications, resulting in multiple copies of the same application on multiple servers. To solve this problem, CHP consolidated its regional datacenters, but the Youngstown and Cincinnati datacenters were still separately managed using Avocent's DSView 2 software. Solution: 42U is assisting the two datacenters in upgrading to Avocent's DSView 3 software and combining the management of both datacenters into one shared Web-based user interface. The DSR appliances have the ability to be backward-compatible so that they can communicate with appliances used at the onset of the solution's design. | | Challenge 2: Enable Secure Remote Access | Challenge: In 2001, CHP realized that it had outgrown its datacenter KVM switch technology. Administrators and vendors did not have remote access to CHP's servers using the old KVM switches. CHP needed to provide secure remote access to both administrators and vendors. Datacenter cable clutter was also a problem. Solution: The Avocent solution allows administrators and vendors to remotely access the servers from anywhere. Avocent's DSView 3 software allows administrators to set access privileges for each server, monitor user activity, and provides user authentication through internal or external services such as LDAP, Active Directory, NT Domain, TACACS+, RADIUS and RSA SecurID.
| | Challenge 3: Enable Data Recovery | Challenge: CHP determined that it needed to strengthen its data recovery ability in the event of system failure or a disaster.
Solution: Avocent's DSView 3 software features a "hub and spoke" architecture and a redundant, replicating database, which provides an industry-leading backup/failover solution. In addition, the hub-and-spoke architecture cuts down on bandwidth consumption by allowing users to communicate to the spoke environment to cut down on network traffic.
| | Challenge 4: Allow for Easier Upgrades | Challenge: CHP needed a solution that would allow it to upgrade devices quickly and easily with little or no downtime.
Solution: The DSView 3 software allows firmware upgrades to be "pushed out" to many devices simultaneously from its single, Web-based user interface. No scheduled downtime is required.
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Note: As of September, 2006, CHP has outsourced its IT functions to Perot Systems, so all employees of both datacenters are now employees of Perot Systems. About 42U
42U focuses on providing Facilities and Data Center Managers with objective and trusted independent information on Data Center Power and Data Center Cooling best practices along with KVM over IP and Remote Power lights out management to help them reduce their organization's power consumption. Our Data Center Management website has helped millions of IT professionals globally who search for best practices and technologies to help them make their computer environment more efficient.
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