BURLINGTON, MA — (Marketwire) — 05/16/12 — Broadleaf, a leader in designing and implementing vendor solutions for data storage, virtualization and WAN optimization, announced that Boston Medflight (BMF) engaged Broadleaf to provide a solution that would improve uptime for a mission critical application and lay the groundwork for an effective IT infrastructure disaster recovery plan.
BMF sought Broadleaf-s expertise to maximize uptime for a key electronic patient care application and protect it in the event of server failure. After discussing BMF-s needs and goals with them, the Broadleaf team recommended a virtualization solution with VMware and NetApp. Server virtualization with VMware allows BMF to maximize uptime because it allows for prompt recovery if a server fails and gives the ability to do maintenance by moving virtualized applications between physical hosts. The benefits mean that virtual machines can be moved from one server to another with no impact to the end users. If one server fails, the application is moved to another physical host. Maintenance is simplified because when patches or updates are needed, VMs can be taken off the server virtually. While the physical host or server is empty, the patch can be done, tested and then the application is virtually moved back.
Shared storage is required to take full advantage of the server virtualization solution in the areas of migration, failover and recovery. Broadleaf recommended that BMF bring NetApp shared storage into their environment. In addition to supporting the VMware environment, the NetApp enterprise class storage platform is a huge asset to BMF because it provides: space efficient snapshots, deduplication, WAN efficient replication, multiprotocol support and application specific backup and recovery functionality. Deduplication slows storage growth costs significantly. Space efficient snapshots serve as recovery points for any onsite data loss or corruption. Snapshots combined with WAN efficient replication set the stage for an effective disaster recovery plan for BMF.
As a second phase of this project, BMF implemented an additional NetApp array in a remote offsite location. The data and array snapshots are replicated from the primary NetApp to the remote NetApp providing a recoverable copy offsite in the event of a disaster. Physical hosts can quickly be started at the DR site to run the virtual machines that are stored as files on the Plymouth NetApp.
Tom Treat, Network Administrator, noted that “attending Broadleaf-s technology lunch seminars built my confidence in their expertise. I turned to them initially to improve uptime for the electronic patient care record application and they provided an efficient, cost effective solution that met the uptime needs and allowed for better management and protection of all of BMF-s data and applications as well as a strong DR plan.”
Boston MedFlight (BMF) is a CAMTS accredited Critical Care Transport service. As a non-profit organization, Boston MedFlight transports emergent patients regardless of their ability to pay and is financially supported in part by a consortium of Boston hospitals. For over 25 years, Boston MedFlight has played an integral role as part of the Massachusetts EMS system and the community hospitals of New England.
Broadleaf helps organizations to effectively manage their data assets with products and services that include: storage, protection, availability, recoverability, virtualization and collaboration. Broadleaf has an in-depth knowledge of storage consolidation, data protection, WAN optimization, disaster recovery and virtualization technologies. Broadleaf provides hardware, software, design, implementation, knowledge transfer and on- going services according to the scope of each client-s needs and goals.
Contact information:
Ted Lambert
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866-337-7733
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