UMass Memorial Health Care Migrates to New Storage Infrastructure (Case Study)
The largest healthcare system in Central Massachusetts is UMass Memorial Health Care. It is UMass Medical School’s clinical partner, having access to cutting-edge technology, research, and clinical trials. The Joint Commission, a national organisation that sets quality standards for hospitals, has given its hospitals full accreditation. UMass Memorial Health Care’s system includes home health and hospice facilities, behavioural health programmes, and community-based physician offices, in addition to fully equipped hospitals. CareWell Urgent Care has a partnership with UMass Memorial Health Care to provide regional urgent care services. In addition, at The Surgery Center in Shrewsbury, the UMass Memorial Medical Group offers high-quality, low-cost outpatient surgery. (data science course Malaysia)
The Obstacle (data science course Malaysia)
Kevin Davis, a Senior Storage Engineer with UMass Memorial Health Care’s Systems Administration and Information Services, understands that exceptional healthcare is no longer possible in today’s digitally-focused society.
Only medical professionals can guarantee this. Healthcare firms must use similarly modern, inventive, and dependable technology to provide great care and services.
The data centre at UMass Memorial Health Care realised it was time to replace a piece of its data storage infrastructure earlier this year. It used and still uses a network-attached storage platform (NAS) to manage and store a wide range of data, including medical applications, patient records, and administrative files. The goal was to migrate all of this data away from the old storage and onto new, faster storage.
The comment (data science course Malaysia)
“The existing storage had over a petabyte of NAS data,” Davis explained, “but any engineer who has to move data across platforms, let alone this much data, knows the problems that can arise can be insurmountable.” He went on to say:
“Making things even more problematic is that, despite the fact that much of the data is decades old and we estimated that roughly 70% of it we should archive of it, the storage was still in use, so we write new business-critical data to it on a regular basis.” And the data is complicated — clinicians and departments within the UMass Memorial Health Care network use a variety of different apps.”
“We also had the added strain of having to move swiftly.” The present storage had reached the end of its useful life, which meant that updates, maintenance, and services were no longer available. Not only is it more expensive to maintain this equipment, but it also puts data at risk.”
The Alternative
Recognizing the task’s scale and essential relevance, Davis and his team conducted extensive investigation and evaluation of various solutions. Davis continued, ”
“I looked at NetApp’s XCP software, but their CIFS tool isn’t very good.” And while I had prior experience with Robocopy and rsync, I simply didn’t have the time to devote to all of the planning, troubleshooting, and programming that those tools required. Furthermore, with the exception of some very simple logs, Robocopy and rsync have no reporting capabilities. When it comes to creating any form of report for management, this implies additional work.”
Davis chose Datadobi because its DobiMigrate enterprise-class software would allow them to safely, rapidly, conveniently, and cost-effectively migrate file or object data across any storage platform, on-premises or in the cloud. The transition was seamless, and the change management procedure was simple.
“Everywhere, change is difficult. Hospitals, on the other hand, operate on slimmer profit margins. We can dry-run a modification with DobiMigrate, assess how long it will take, and appropriately notify other datacenter team members and others outside of IT who may be affected.”
Multiprotocol-compatible Solution
Davis concerned about the speed of the migration and the ease with which it could be managed. Their ability to execute activities that had previously taken hours in a matter of minutes astounded him and his crew. “The initial replication is quick, but once the platform finishes it, it’s insanely quick.” He explained, “You can open as many threads as your network can support.”
“It can also plough through metadata and find changes in our databases in a lightning-fast and efficient manner.” It’s also a cakewalk to make any kind of mistake. DobiMigrate takes care of everything, even when users include emojis in the file name. “Yes, that does happen.”
Furthermore, the fact that it provided a single, multiprotocol-compatible solution was a plus. “We required a solution that could handle CIFS, SMB, and NFS protocols, and DobiMigrate delivered.”
Last but not least, the capability for continuous monitoring received great marks.
“Hospitals require long-term retention.” As part of our operations and to meet regulatory obligations, my end-users — caregivers and administrators — must keep and secure data for years, which can extend to decades for clinical data. We can now see what data is in use, the exact age of each file, right down to the department and user level.”
“It put us well over a year ahead of the curve,” Davis said. We would have been constantly stymied if it hadn’t been for it.”
The Long Run
COVID-19, predictably, has shifted priorities, forcing UMass Memorial Health Care to postpone the final switchover to the new NetApp infrastructure. We migrated approximately half of the storage, or 500 TBs, to the new NetApp storage so far. Besides, we use DobiMigrate to replicate data every three hours until the switchover is complete.
“Moreover, we relocated all of the departmental shares,” Davis explained, “but the home directories are still hanging.”
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