Challenge: Effectively manage and protect growing hospital data residing on MEDITECH and Allscripts EMR systems and Medicity HIE. Solution: Deliver high-availability health- care systems across multiple hospital sites with new cost efficiencies using NetApp FAS3270HA and FAS3240HA storage systems.

1. Success Story
Albemarle Health Delivers
MEDITECH EMR System and
High Availability on NetApp
Another NetApp
solution delivered by:
Customer Profile community healthcare provider is
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Albemarle Health, a Vidant Health widely known for its state-of-the-art
Industry Partner, is northeastern North Carolina’s technology and premier data center—a
Healthcare largest regional health and wellness significant accomplishment amid
provider, serving a 7-county region tremendous growth.
The Challenge of more than 130,000 year-round
Effectively manage and protect However, due to the complexity of
residents. Facilities include Albemarle
growing hospital data residing on adding new services and the daily
Hospital, a full-service medical center
MEDITECH and Allscripts EMR growth of PACS medical imaging,
in Elizabeth City featuring critical care,
systems and Medicity HIE. health information exchange (HIE),
diagnostic imaging, surgical and car-
electronic medical records (EMR),
The Solution diovascular services, and comprehen-
Microsoft® Exchange e-mail, Microsoft
Deliver high-availability health- sive women’s care; Regional Medical
SQL Server® databases, video, and
care systems across multiple Center, in Kitty Hawk, which houses an
other data, Albemarle Health needed
hospital sites with new cost outpatient surgery center, laboratory,
to enhance its storage infrastructure.
efficiencies using NetApp® diagnostic imaging services, and offices
To continue on its growth path, the
FAS3270HA and FAS3240HA for multiple physician specialists;
healthcare organization needed a more
storage systems. Regional Oncology Center, a state-of-
flexible, manageable storage infra-
the-art cancer treatment facility located
structure that could accommodate the
Benefits on the campus of Albemarle Hospital;
intensive performance and scalability
Reduce storage in virtual and the Albemarle Health Sleep Center,
requirements of its data-intensive envi-
environment by 60% with in Elizabeth City.
ronment. In addition, tight integration
NetApp deduplication.
The Challenge with its MEDITECH and Allscripts EMR
Increase system performance
Accommodate, protect growing systems was imperative.
from 17GB per hour to 250GB
accumulation of hospital data
per hour. Just as important, the organization
Meet tight 4-hour RPOs. Albemarle Health offers a variety of
needed to ensure the continuous
quality healthcare services, rich edu-
protection of its critical data to meet
cational opportunities, and important
patient care needs and requirements,
community outreach to North Carolina
such as Health Insurance Portability
residents. Dedicated to delivering its
and Accountability Act regulations. With
services with integrity, compassion,
an IT staff of 24 and only 3 support-
innovation, and quality, the regional
ing the storage environment, a highly

2. “Our decision to invest in NetApp through ePlus
was based on economics. As a midsize regional
medical center with budget constraints, we
needed a scalable, easy-to-support solution that
could deliver high availability for our mission-
critical MEDITECH and Allscripts EMR systems,
as well as our Medicity HIE. At the same time,
it had to provide us with the ability to meet a
stringent recovery time objective.”
Stephen W. Clark
FACHE, Chief Information Officer, Albemarle Health
efficient disaster recovery strategy and highly scalable storage environment to the ongoing mission of improving
secure patient data were paramount overcome its big data challenges. The patient services. “We were rapidly
to meeting service-level agreements solution includes a NetApp FAS3270HA expanding and making significant
(SLAs) and regulatory requirements. storage system for primary storage and investments in other initiatives, such
a NetApp FAS3240HA storage system as our Emergency Department and
Working closely with ePlus, a technol- for disaster recovery, with archival Surgery Center construction and reno-
ogy solutions provider and NetApp Star storage provided by NetApp strategic vation project,” says Clark. “NetApp
Partner, Albemarle Health assessed partner CommVault. Today Albemarle efficiency and scalability helped us
several storage solutions through rigor- Health stores 189TB of data on NetApp tackle our big data challenges while
ous investigation and in-depth discus- storage, compared with the 15TB of optimizing our IT resources, which was
sions with NetApp customers. The data it had stored on its previous sys- critical to meeting our tight budget
organization decided on NetApp stor- tem just three years ago. objectives at the time and continues
age to meet the increasing demands to deliver impressive ROI.”
of its hospital practices and to accom- NetApp storage serves as the founda-
modate exponential data growth. tion for 100% of the hospital’s systems The Albemarle Health IT team leverages
accessed by physicians, nurses, hos- NetApp SnapManager® for Microsoft
“Our decision to invest in NetApp pital administrators, and other staff Exchange, Single Mailbox Recov-
through ePlus was based on econom- members across five geographically ery, SnapManager for Microsoft SQL
ics,” says Stephen W. Clark, FACHE, dispersed facilities. Tight integra- Server, and SnapManager for Virtual
chief information officer, Albemarle tion between NetApp storage and the Infrastructure to protect vital hospital
Health. “As a midsize regional medi- MEDITECH and Allscripts EMR sys- information and help meet rigid SLAs
cal center with budget constraints, we tems streamlines storage management and availability requirements. The
needed a scalable, easy-to-support and helps provide anytime, anywhere SnapManager tools help IT manage the
solution that could deliver high avail- access to critical patient data. Other proliferation of the hospital’s Microsoft
ability for our mission-critical MEDI- applications delivered and protected Exchange Server databases. The team
TECH and Allscripts EMR systems, by NetApp storage include MedHost, executes rapid backups several times
as well as our Medicity HIE and other Medicity HIE, Merge PACS, GE Centric- per day without taking Exchange Server
clinical data. At the same time, it had ity Perinatal, TSG Galactica document databases or the organization’s 1,100
to provide us with the ability to meet a imaging, IP cameras for surveillance, Exchange mailboxes offline.
stringent recovery time objective.” and others.
Business Benefits
The Solution Storage management efficiency was a Supporting Albemarle Health growth
High-availability storage, ongoing key driver in the hospital adopting the
access to patient data Because Albemarle Health is focused
NetApp storage solution, especially on operational efficiency and investing
Albemarle Health engaged ePlus to given the degree of data growth and in new services and programs, optimiz-
help design and implement an efficient,
ing its IT budget amid massive data

3. Primary Data Center Disaster Recovery Data Center
NetApp FAS3270HA
CommVault BS1
NDMP
running NetApp
Data ONTAP 8.0
NetApp SnapMirror
NetApp Snapshot technology
Meditech Client/Server 5.6.4 NetApp SnapDrive
MedHost
Tape Backup Medicity HIE—ProAccess,
NovoGrid, iNexx NetApp FAS3240HA
Allscripts Professional EMR
Merge PACS
Figure 1) Albemarle Health Storage Infrastructure.
Albemarle Health stores 189TB of data including its MEDITECH and Allscripts EMR systems and Merge PACS environment on NetApp FAS3270HA
and FAS3240HA storage systems.
growth is imperative. “With NetApp clone and test a database or LUN has other maintenance have decreased
storage, we can store more hospital decreased from 2.5 hours to 5 minutes. from one to two days to just hours, and
data on less storage and have lowered “With NetApp FlexClone®, we can easily unplanned system downtime is now
our operational costs all while boosting and efficiently run consistency checks well within Albemarle Health’s service-
performance from 17GB per hour to on critical production databases such level objectives.
250GB per hour,” says Clark. as our ER systems using a full set of
Keeping up with new IT demands
current data,” says Clark. “It helps us in healthcare
The IT staff uses simple, command- know that we’re protected in the event
based NetApp deduplication technol- Though Albemarle Health faces con-
of a disaster.”
ogy to reduce storage requirements in stant pressure in the healthcare indus-
its virtual environment by 60%. Tight Protecting critical hospital systems try to achieve greater economies of
integration between NetApp storage and patient services scale in the IT environment, the com-
and VMware® supports the hospital’s Albemarle Health has an efficient, pany is succeeding in maximizing the
virtualization strategy. To date, the IT comprehensive disaster recovery plan value of its technology investment. Its
staff has achieved 70% virtualization in place that helps enable the continu- lean, highly efficient IT department has
on NetApp storage, resulting in the ous availability of all hospital systems. the capabilities to effectively manage
elimination of 84 physical servers and NetApp disaster recovery capabilities its data-intensive environment. With
a significantly more efficient provision- allow the company to better protect an enhanced disaster recovery plan,
ing process. critical hospital systems while enhanc- improved storage efficiencies, and
ing IT staff productivity. streamlined storage management, the
“It used to take us the better part of a healthcare organization is positioned
week to deploy a new server, and now “Recovering our widely used MEDITECH to continue to expand and deliver
it typically takes less than a day,” notes EMR system from tape a few years new services.
Clark. “Those same IT staff resources ago took 72 hours,” says Clark. “Today
are free to now focus on supporting we back up our data from disk to disk “In my 30 years in healthcare, I’ve
the development of new programs that on NetApp storage using NetApp never experienced such pressures on
help us grow and IT innovation that can Snapshot™ copies and SnapMirror® IT departments,” says Clark. “We’re
enhance our delivery of patient services.” replication, which reduces recovery feeling the impact of everything from
point objectives from days or weeks intensified meaningful-use requirements
Clark also notes greatly improved to 4 hours or less. We can back up around electronic health records to
application performance and enhanced 200 servers in less time than it previ- more frequent releases from health-
productivity in Albemarle Health orga- ously took us to back up 12 servers. care software vendors aggressively
nizations. For example, the network The average recovery process takes us competing with one another. Given the
administration group can now log minutes or seconds, with no impact to changing face of healthcare, it’s more
into a key application in 30 seconds the end user.” Since deploying high- important than ever that we have the
rather than 3 minutes. Time needed to availability NetApp storage, planned right technology in place that reduces
outages for system upgrades and

4. “With the efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and
advanced storage management capabilities offered
by NetApp, we’ve carefully selected and invested
in a storage solution that will continue to help us
manage steady data growth and respond to the
growing needs of our organization.”
Stephen W. Clark
FACHE, Chief Information Officer, Albemarle Health
our cost of ownership and makes us
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
more agile. With the efficiency, flex-
ibility, scalability, and advanced stor- NetApp Products Medicity HIE—ProAccess, NovoGrid,
age management capabilities offered FAS3270HA and FAS3240HA iNexx
by NetApp, we’ve wisely invested in a storage systems Allscripts Professional EMR
storage solution that will continue to
Data ONTAP® software Merge PACS
help us manage steady data growth
and respond to the growing needs of SnapManager for Microsoft CommVault BS1 NDMP
our organization.” Exchange, SQL Server, and
Cisco Unified Computing System
Virtual Infrastructure
Cisco MDS 9000 Series Switches
Single Mailbox Recovery
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches
FlexClone technology
Microsoft SQL Server
Snapshot technology
2005/2008/2008 R2
Protocols Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
NFS
Microsoft Windows Server®
CIFS 2003/2008
iSCSI VMware 4.1
Fibre Channel
Partner
Third-Party Products ePlus Inc.
MEDITECH Client/Server 5.6.4 www.eplus.com
MedHost
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