Art Vinson, Logicalis Account Executive, and Jim Atwood, Director of IT Architecture and Solution Design, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

Child's Play

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta teams with systems integrator Logicalis Group to defeat disaster

Things were simpler in ancient times. To prepare for an emergency-say a flood of biblical proportions-you needed only to build an ark, grab two of every living thing in sight, set sail, then wait for the floodwaters to recede. Needless to say, this sort of disaster recovery strategy is no longer effective.

"Yes, we need to provide disaster recovery and business continuity for any and every eventuality, but like everyone else we need to be price conscious," says Jim Atwood, director of IT architecture and solution design for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Georgia. "We can't just deploy two of everything."

Atwood manages IT for two main pediatric hospital facilities, along with an additional two dozen satellite locations across metropolitan Atlanta.

Recently, Atwood and his IT organization were faced with the prospect of implementing a new electronic medical records system, which required that they ensure the system was simultaneously secure, available, and-in the event of an unplanned system outage-quickly recoverable.

"The medical staff said they could provide quality care in an emergency using a paper-based system, but only for about four hours," Atwood explains.

The four-hour response metric evolved from the industry standard in terms of turnaround time promised by IT vendors who provide replacement equipment. During these first few critical hours, it falls to Atwood and Children's IT staff to troubleshoot and source problems that are not immediately apparent.

Because there were many business continuity options to explore, Children's sought expert guidance. The organization had previously enjoyed good results when working with the local office of systems integrator Logicalis, so they turned to them again.

Logicalis account executive Art Vinson offered Children's two options, one of which was hardware dependent, the other software focused.

The hospital settled on the software-centric solution based on NetBackup, Storage Foundation, Volume Replicator, and Cluster Server from Symantec.

The advantages-and the savings-were clear: Symantec's products were heterogeneous and worked with all of Children's existing hardware and operating systems, from AIX to Linux to UNIX.

This heterogeneity meant Atwood wasn't tied to a specific piece of proprietary hardware for the new storage array; he could choose whichever one best fit Children's needs.

Atwood says he can now use virtually any kind of hard drive-from ATA to Serial ATA to SCSI-within the backup array. "I can make an educated decision about what to put in my disaster recovery system," he explains. "I didn't have to buy another storage array just for disaster recovery."