The Cisco-based storage area network (SAN) will enable the medical center to accommodate the rapid growth of data, improve business continuity, and meet compliance requirements for accessing and storing data. The new SAN has also enabled Mercy to implement a disaster recovery plan and support faster access to data.
Mercy Medical Center has consolidated two separate SAN ‘islands’ into one large, highly available SAN based on Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Directors. Cisco CWDM Multiplexers connect the main data center to a secondary backup and disaster recovery site, supporting the medical center’s robust disaster recovery plan. Since physicians, clinicians, and administrators have all come to rely on email as a quick means of communication, the SAN will also be used to deploy backup storage for email. The medical center used VSAN capability to migrate data from the old SAN to the new one, then to separate production data from backup data.
Roger Wilson, systems and networking manager at Mercy Medical Center, said: Fast recoverability, throughput, and scalability were the critical factors we needed for our long term success. We also liked the Cisco SAN monitoring and diagnostic tools.
