DataCore Partner Helixstorm Deploys Stretch Cluster and Stretch HA Storage Configuration at American Society of Health-System Pharmacists that Delivers Fault-Tolerance
SAN FRANCISCO – August 30, 2010 – At VMworld 2010 in San Francisco,
DataCore Software, a leading provider of software-based virtualization
solutions empowering storage, today announced that American Society of
Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) has implemented a new stretch cluster
and stretch high-availability (HA) storage configuration based on
DataCore storage virtualization software and VMware server
virtualization software to ensure uptime and business continuity. This
new, stretch, dual-node configuration was implemented by DataCore
partner Helixstorm, Inc. and together, DataCore and VMware form an HA
configuration that spans floors – serving as an industrial-strength
production system with fault-tolerance.
The goal is to transition all of ASHP’s data onto the newly
configured, fault-tolerant, virtualized environment. “I am now a
believer in the software-based approach to high-availability and
storage virtualization,” states Jack Spencer, vice president of
operations and CIO at American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
“It was not intuitive until I actually saw it. But now that I have, I
am no longer skeptical. Going forward, I will put the bulk of all the
money earmarked for network storage into expanding the DataCore
configuration as well as building in remote disaster recovery.”
Enterprise Scalability, Seamless Business Continuity, Data Resiliency and High Performance That Supports the ASHP Membership
ASHP serves the professional pharmacist – i.e. health-system
pharmacists, including clinical pharmacy, specialized pharmacy (for
instance oncology, research, compounding, etc.) and hospital pharmacy.
ASHP is also an accrediting body – serving as a grantor of continuing
education certifications. A membership organization lives and dies
because of the data associated with its members. Both member
information as well as the ability to fulfill its mission of being
responsible for professional licensing – in terms of granting
continuing education credits – has to be protected for an extended
period of time by ASHP’s IT systems.
ASHP has 35,000 individual members. The staff at ASHP itself
comprises 210 people. All benefit from the uptime the virtualized
environment, with DataCore at the heart of it all. “The DataCore
Software stretch HA solution delivers enterprise scalability, seamless
business continuity, data resiliency, and high performance for a
cost-effective price tag when comparing it to traditional storage
arrays,” states Aaron Schneider, principal and co-founder, Helixstorm,
Inc. “The best part about it is that if ASHP lost a floor to power or
critical disaster, the users would not experience an outage because of
seamless I/O failover to the surviving node. You get high availability
right out of the box just by deploying the virtual storage software in
two locations.”
The New HA Configuration: DataCore + VMware Form an Industrial-Strength Production System with Fault-Tolerance
The two HA systems are stretched across two floors at ASHP using
synchronous mirroring – thereby providing data redundancy. In total,
the data pool – near-line and on-line – comprises sixty (60) terabytes
at ASHP. Because ASHP publishes 500+ different publications, storage
has always been a big requirement. Three years ago, ASHP became
interested in the flexibility, ease-of-use, centralized management and
reduced costs that DataCore’s software-based approach to managing and
virtualizing their storage assets afforded. DataCore was not, however,
ASHP’s first step into virtualization. Prior to DataCore, VMware was
deployed at ASHP and the virtual machine (VM) farm has grown four-fold
over five years.
“We designed and implemented a true highly available SAN solution,”
states Eric Henry, CTO and co-founder, Helixstorm, Inc. “It’s a shared
nothing environment, which means the disks do not share a backplane
with the controllers like traditional arrays. ASHP has eliminated all
single points of failure between the application servers and the
storage controllers along with increasing the data resiliency by
stretching’ the SAN between two floors via redundant fiber channel
connections for synchronous mirroring. You just can’t get any better
business continuity than that!”
The next phase entails
adding a third, remote node for disaster recovery (DR) purposes.
Historically, ASHP has used SunGard Data Systems for DR. However, it is
far more appealing to Spencer and his team to purchase another
SANmelody storage domain server and deploy that at an off-site location
– connecting it to his production asynchronously and providing remote
replication.
A Mission-Critical Solution and Configuration
Spencer extols the value-added utilities and features of SANmelody
as well as its ease of use – chiefly its simplicity in terms of set-up
and maintenance. “Trying to carve out a LUN on a big SAN is a true
hassle,” explains Spencer. “Then trying to maintain and keep track of
the different LUNs – just the maintenance of the configuration – is
very complicated. Software-based SANmelody makes it simple. It is
elegantly straightforward and simple in terms of removing
labor-intensive aspects of SAN maintenance.”
About ASHP
For more than 60 years, ASHP has helped pharmacists who
practice in hospitals and health systems improve medication use and
enhance patient safety. The Society’s 35,000 members include
pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who practice in inpatient,
outpatient, home-care, and long-term-care settings, as well as pharmacy
students. For more information about the wide array of ASHP activities
and the many ways in which pharmacists help people make the best use of
medicines, visit ASHP’s Web site, www.ashp.org, or its consumer Web site, www.SafeMedication.com.
About DataCore Software
DataCore Software develops the storage virtualization software
needed to get the highest availability, fastest performance and maximum
utilization from storage resources in physical and virtual IT
environments. It provides the critical 3rd dimension on which the
success of server and desktop virtualization projects hinge, regardless
of the models and brands of storage devices used. For more information,
call (877) 780-5111 or visit www.datacore.com.
DataCore, SANmelody and the DataCore logo are
trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation.
Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are
trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products,
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respective owners.
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