Combating Failing Storage Arrays with Hybrid Storage Solutions

Challenges

Data is expanding at an exponential rate and many organizations are struggling to deal with the rising storage costs and management requirements. Combined with the “always-on” and “instant” culture, it creates a need to have massive amounts of data readily available at a user’s finger tips at all times. This is especially apparent within the healthcare environment as critical patient records and user applications need to be available 24/7. When a large Long Island hospital approached Vandis with a need to replace their failing storage arrays, Vandis realized that it was imperative to find a solution that would not only be quick and reliable, but could be implemented immediately.

Selection Criteria

After the hospital experienced a major SQL outage, they realized that they needed to replace their lower end storage solutions with devices that could be trusted to increase performance and keep critical applications running. This organization in particular had been looking to upgrade their storage infrastructure for several years and had already been introduced to a variety of different solutions.  However, once they began to experience critical outages, they called and asked for help. The hospital was, at the time, using their storage solution to house SQL and file data as well as all of their Microsoft systems and programs.  With that much data being spread out among multiple different end points, it is difficult from both a capacity and data protection aspect to ensure speed and reliability.  Due to their requirements, Vandis engineers realized that a hybrid storage solution would be the correct fit.  

Solution

Since the organization was battling against failing devices, they had to make a decision quickly.  After a few meetings, it was clear that Nimble Storage was the proper fit due to their reliability and performance benefits.  The hospital purchased several CS460s with expansion shelves and leveraged snapshot for backup to make sure all of their data was secure and reliable. An added benefit was that their data became more flexible due to Nimble Storage’s compression and replication features. The added peace of mind was extremely important to the organization as they had just gone through experiencing major problems with their current storage solution.

Results

Due to Vandis’ sensitive understanding of the situation and our long standing relationship with the organization, the solution was implemented very quickly.  From start to finish, the entire project took less than two weeks.  Vandis was able to take out the old and failing storage solution and replace it with one that would be quicker, reliable, and offer much greater flexibility for years to come.