Medical Center Protects Critical Business Applications While Eliminating Backup Window after Switching from Backup Exec – RTO Goes from 36 Hours to Under an Hour

Environmental Snapshot:

• Exchange: approximately 250 mailboxes on a single Exchange 2003 server
• SQL servers: 6
• Windows file servers: 4
• Virtualization: converting HIM/EMR system to a VMware virtualized environment
• Data total: around 700GB

Rocky Russell and all his IT staff at Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center knew that the backup software they’d been using for over seven years wasn’t working for them. As the Senior Network Engineer at Pattie A. Clay, Russell and his team struggled night-after-night with the ever-encroaching backup window and the potential danger of losing up to 23 hours of work if something went wrong.

“We were using Backup Exec,” says Russell, “and we were only able to do incremental backups each evening which were taking up to eight hours to complete. This meant that if something went wrong, we’d lose a full day’s work, plus hours to get back up and running.”

Russell and his team found that the Center had more and more network traffic, in conjunction with longer and longer backups. And as the backup window increased, so did Russell’s concern that at any moment, one of the servers would fail and the medical center would be left without the backup data they needed. “We have a couple of absolutely critical servers that I worried about,” says Russell. “One is Exchange – if we lost this, it would be horrible. All the business communication is through email. Then we have our folder redirection server. If this failed, there would not only be the possibility of a loss of a full day’s work, but also an additional 12 hours to recover. On our SQL servers we’ve got the McKesson suite that has materials management, financials, operating room suite documentation, supplies, our intranet, and our document management servers with patient documentation and billing records. If we experienced a total loss of one of the critical servers, we’d be easily looking at a loss of 24 hours of data with up to 12 hours to recover.”

This scenario just wasn’t working for Russell, but he and his team found themselves going along with the status quo since they’d already paid for their current software. They got by hoping, with fingers crossed, that nothing would go wrong. That is, until the day Russell received communication from Dell AppAssure asking if he was happy with his backups. “Frankly,” says Russell, “we weren’t.”

“I went to my manager and said, ‘Look, this isn’t working,’” explains Russell. “I told her, ‘The issue really is recovery.’ She and I both knew that what we had wasn’t the best in the world so we decided to present our case to management.”

Russell laid out the issues both in terms of numbers and in terms of vulnerability that the medical center was facing. While the numbers were impressive in terms of cost savings, it was the vulnerability of the business infrastructure that made the sale. Just looking at a failure of the Exchange and folder redirect server, the medical center stood to lose a full day’s worth of data, plus at least 12 hours for recovery. These were unacceptable RTO and RPO points for the center. “My thought still is on the selling point that we could reduce our data loss potential from 36 hours to less than one hour on our critical servers,” says Russell. “This is what made the center’s management realize that this is it – Dell AppAssure is what we needed.”

To assure the continuity and continuous data protection of Pattie A. Clay Medical Center’s business operations they needed a software foundation that was robust, easy to use, and application-aware. Now Pattie Clay records are protected. “We’re able to support the IT needs of the hospital employees confidently now,” says Russell. “The center’s business infrastructure is so important, because basically, you can’t take care of patients if you can’t run the business. With Dell AppAssure, we feel far more comfortable about disaster recovery for the servers. The idea of a total server hardware failure is no longer a nightmare. We also feel that the ability to recover single files and even single email messages from any point in time is hugely significant.”

Russell and his team are also thrilled by Dell AppAssure features which ease the burden of Bare Metal Restores (BMR) and allow for virtualization and replication together with deduplication and compressions. On each feature, Russell says:

• BMR: “With our critical cluster, it used to take eight to 10 hours to recover or do an upgrade, including reinstalling Windows, getting the backup tape set up, and so on. With Dell AppAssure, I did one server that took only 45 minutes. You just can’t do that with Backup Exec.”
• Virtual Recovery: “Because of Dell AppAssure, we are currently converting to a VMware environment and in the process, deciding what physical servers make sense to move over. We’re able to convert Health Information Management (HIM) records from several vendors to one server of Dell AppAssure for VMware, and soon we’ll get rid of some of the SQL servers.”
• Replication: “We replicate to a second server located in another building on campus. You want to trust more than one server, because if one building gets damaged, the other is fine.”
• Storage Compression: “Right now my backup-to-disc server is currently using around 4TB of disc to handle the rotation schedule I am using. I also back up to tape about 250GB each Friday. Dell AppAssure is running just over 500GB for the base images and recovery points. This is great.”

Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center is now poised for any disaster that might threaten to shut down its IT infrastructure, thus crippling the center’s ability to function. Rocky Russell and his team are now sleeping better at night with Dell AppAssure’s advanced backup and disaster recovery software. “The ease of backup and the disaster recovery ability were the main selling points,” summed up Russell. “This is just the right thing to do for our critical servers. It’s great that we’re saving money, but that’s a bonus.”

About Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center

Founded in 1892, as a four-bed clinic in a house in downtown Richmond, Kentucky, Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center is now a 105 bed acute care facility, with 650 employees serving Richmond, Madison County, and the surrounding counties.