CUSTOMER CASE STUDY
Key Benefits • Easy to deploy and use – saving time and money • Easy to manage - highly trained, expensive personnel are unnecessary • Lower TCO by leveraging existing IP infrastructure • Open and accessible local support makes installation easy and trouble-free • Improved application performance • Scalable architecture enables managed growth
Dynamic Health Strategies, Inc. (DHS) Simplifies Storage Infrastructure While Cutting Costs and Improving End User Performance Business Challenge DHS healthcare data analysts were producing mountains of data so quickly that the company’s storage network couldn’t handle the workload. As a result, analysts could not process or analyze data efficiently. Solution The IT staff replaced its archaic Direct- Attached Storage (DAS) environment with a more efficient IP-SAN solution from Intransa. The system took advantage of DHS’s existing IP infrastructure, made it easier to add capacity and improved end user performance.
The Problem Dynamic Health Strategies, Inc. (www.DHSGroup.com), based in Houston, Texas, is a healthcare consulting and management company dedicated to the advancement of health through research, quality analysis, performance evaluation, data extraction and information exchange. DHS combines data storage and retrieval, Internet technology, audit discipline, proprietary analytical software and evaluation techniques in a web-enabled format. This allows DHS medical data analysts to describe, evaluate, monitor, and improve the quality and performance of health care providers, health plans and health systems. This objective is accomplished through data extraction, exchange, analysis and reporting of the effectiveness and efficiency of health outcome measures. The proprietary research applications DHS uses to process data requires a large amount of storage capacity to keep up with the large volumes of raw data as well as data models and reports. It quickly grew apparent to the IT staff that the company’s growing storage needs would outgrow its Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) network. Malek A. Bohsali, Chief Operating Officer for DHS, projected their current computation load would consume the amount of storage available by the end of the year. As a stopgap solution, he and his staff began to move data to CD to free up room on the servers for new research projects. Using this system, data could only be kept for one to two years, and while DHS had an immediate need for two TBs of storage to continue normal business operations, the expensive and hard-to-manage DAS environment would not be able to accommodate their needs, nor could it be scaled easily. Traditional Fibre-Channel storage was not an option for DHS as it was too expensive and difficult to use. The ideal storage solution would allow them to start small and scale as required and would not force them to pay up front for storage they might or might not need in the future. Additionally, the system had to be easy to use as it was to be managed by non-IT administrators. Everything, including implementation, had to be done quickly. The system would be required to provide flexibility in daily operations and accommodate a reliable, stable, and low-cost of ownership scalability plan. It would be used for enterprise storage focusing on a multi-dimensional business intelligence application.
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY Most importantly, administrators would have to have the ability to provision storage resources on the fly as needs arose.
The Solution
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The DHS team looked at a number of storage vendors but settled on an IP SAN solution from Intransa that took advantage of DHS’s existing IP infrastructure. He initially purchased a two controller Intransa IP SAN storage system, and has continued to grow the environment. Intransa IP storage systems can grow to 1,500TB of RAID protected, fault tolerant yet affordable storage. According to Bohsali, “Intransa had lots of information available about their product. The people were smart and helpful. Their system is easier to manage and expand.” The systems’ ease of use and configuration was a big factor in choosing the Intransa solution due to the administrators’ lack of IT experience. The install was done in the morning and by the afternoon the system was already up and running with limited configuration. Since then, the staff has barely had to manage the equipment, only doing minor configuration when adding or re-provisioning storage resources. As a result of the Intransa architecture, which uses standard Ethernet switching for host and storage array connection, DHS achieves much better performance than with its previous DAS environment. Intransa’s scalable architecture enables DHS to easily scale the IP SAN using in-house resources. Before the Intransa solution was implemented DHS found that if 10 to 12 people were hitting the same model, performance and response times were degraded. With the Intransa storage grid installed, there is no impact to users or the application even when multiple people hit the same model simultaneously. DHS medical data analysts and customers now have seamless, high performance data access.
Business and IT Benefits By implementing an IP SAN solution from Intransa, DHS was able to simplify its IT infrastructure and improve the performance of its proprietary medical research application. As a result, researchers have faster and more reliable access to data enabling them to process and analyze patient records and test results more effectively. In addition, the company is able to pick up or start more research projects without having to worry about storage capacity. “The stable storage environment makes it easier for end users to work with the application than we anticipated,”
“Intransa is a well kept secret in storage. Whenever we need more storage we plan to use their solution. We would recommend that those with storage needs take a look at Intransa’s IP SAN solutions due to the ease of use, deployment, and total cost of ownership.” – Malek A. Bohsali, Chief Operating Officer, Dynamic Health Strategies, Inc. said Bohsali. “Our users are neither network savvy nor O/S kernel savvy, so it is a requirement that the IT environment be easy to use and require little intuitive capability.” Bohsali points out DHS’s users should not have to worry about IT issues when their primary responsibility is medical data analysis. They should be able to process and analyze data without worrying about storage capacity. With the Intransa solution, users just have to drag and drop files as in Windows and the volumes show up as a drive with a letter on the server. This happens on each server with an iSCSI initiator defined in the management console (called StorControl®) to each volume created. “The Intransa IP SAN has been a great addition to our infrastructure, because of price and the ease of administration and use,” Bohsali said. “Individuals with lower levels of IT expertise are able to manage our storage.” Intransa’s modular architecture allows DHS to start small and pay as they grow, with a pay-back period of less than a year. Provisioning a seamless storage pool and volume expansion to keep up with rapidly growing data needs is as simple as connecting an additional disk enclosure, which is then automatically detected and exposed by the storage controllers. Contrary to vendors that require the purchase of additional controllers or expanded software licenses, Intransa licenses relate only to the storage controllers. In the future, Bohsali plans to use one of his Intransa systems to set up a more efficient backup cycle and implement an off-site disaster recovery facility. By running these systems over the IP network, Bohsali will save hours off his backup window and provide peace of mind to the thousands of researchers who use DHS’s system. Intransa is both a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, the first to certify a 10GbE IP SAN solution with Exchange 2007, which was tested with up to 11,000 users, and a VMware Technology Alliance Partner, with systems certified in every VMware category for Green IT benefits.
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