The Solution
Working towards resilience
Following an open tender, The State Hospital selected a proposal based on IBM technology put forward by IBM Premier Business Partner Celerity.
“We have worked closely with Celerity for more than four years, so they know our systems inside out,” says Brammer. “They listened closely to our criteria and delivered a proposal that surpassed our expectations, promising truly exceptional resilience at a very reasonable price point.”
In a three-month project, Celerity designed and configured an active- active dual data center concept for the organization. The State Hospital chose to fully populate each of its existing two IBM BladeCenter H chassis with an additional seven IBM BladeCenter HS22 blade servers virtualized with VMware software. With service continuity a key priority for The State Hospital, Celerity ran the existing and new blades in parallel before migrating its production environment server- by-server, minimizing downtime.
“The migration was close to perfect, completed ahead of schedule and with just a few minutes’ downtime to our business-critical systems,” comments Brammer. “The new blade servers provide six times the processing power of the previous environment and significantly greater capacity. As a result, we could probably run our entire environment on just two of the blades if we wanted to, although we choose to spread the load to maximize redundancy and ensure there is no single point of failure.”
Cutting-edge technology at an affordable price
Celerity also deployed an IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller stretched cluster connected to three IBM System Storage DS5020 devices, deploying 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel interfaces to achieve high I/O performance. One System Storage DS5020 disk system with 9.6 TB of capacity is located at each of The State Hospital’s primary and secondary data center rooms, approximately 150 meters apart. A third System Storage DS5020 disk system in an air-conditioned secure building hosts three quorum disks, providing an extra level of protection against disaster. An IBM System Storage TS3100 is used for tape backup, and IBM Global Technology Services® provide ongoing maintenance for the solution.
“IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller is the real star of the solution, from our point of view,” says Brammer. “Previously, a solution of this sophistication would have been too expensive. The ingenious stretched-cluster design configured for us by Celerity enables us to automatically bounce back in the event of a disaster, meaning business can continue as usual 24/7. This gives us huge peace of mind, allowing our staff to be confident of access to vital information at any time of day or night.”
Easy manageability
As a result of the project, The State Hospital has moved to a more sophisticated disaster recovery strategy, offering dramatically faster recommencement of operations in the event of a systems outage. The close integration between IBM technology and VMware software is a major asset to The State Hospital, enabling the organization’s IT team to use the same tools to manage its infrastructure as before, with no need to relearn a new technology. The State Hospital has also found virtually no increase in the amount of time spent on systems management.
“Offering a single point of control for a storage landscape with no single point of failure, the IBM BladeCenter and System Storage solution has proved ideal for an organization like us, where protecting against downtime is the critical priority for a relatively small IT team,” says Brammer. “Working closely with an SAN Volume Controller expert from Celerity to configure the stretched cluster helped us get
to grips with the new solution, and our day-to-day administration is pretty much the same as before. This is an impressive advantage when you consider that we have moved to a disaster recovery strategy that enables us to have our entire production environment go down with no interruption to service, compared to a potential two-hour wait on our old systems.”