NetApp Storage Case Study Dudley Primary Care Trust

Summary

Dudley Primary Care Trust (PCT) has worked with Centralis to deploy NetApp storage solution to support their use of virtualisation technologies in creating a regional shared services infrastructure. 

About the Customer

The Dudley PCT area covers 56 general GP practices and 40 dental surgeries, 40 ophthalmic premises, 60 pharmacy premises and

  directly employs more than 1800 people, over 900 of whom provide community based healthcare across 27 nursing teams, and over 600 provide mental health and learning disability services across the borough. Services include 24 hour district nursing, health visiting, mental health, adults’ and children’s learning disabilities, podiatry, audiology, school nurses, continence, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy. The Dudley PCT is committed to providing better health for all by improving opportunities in communities with poor health, improving access to high quality health care and improving coverage of disease prevention services.

The Challenge

Dudley PCT is responsible for overseeing a distributed environment with staff spread across 100 different locations, and the PCT has also taken on the role of single service provider for the local Mental Health Trust, extending its technology remit to Walsall.

“Dudley PCT had a storage infrastructure that was not capable of providing the growth, performance or flexibility required to support the implementation of new (virtual) services as part of improving service delivery across Dudley and Walsall" said Bill Remmer, Head of IT. 

The Centralis Solution

"In discussions with our preferred solution provider Centralis it became apparent that, for a Virtualised environment, the storage solutions provided by NetApp not only provided the greatest flexibility, resilience and growth but also made operational management (especially provisioning) easier.   Furthermore we have were able to continue to leverage the investment in our existing IBM SANS by using the NetApp V-Filer to control and manage the data and bring this in to the overall storage pool.   The solution offered excellent value when comparing our requirements with what the market had to offer" continues Bill.

Centralis supplied 2 x NetApp FAS 3160 filers as primary storage and DR with a V 3140 as the Virtual Filer sitting in front of the existing IBM SANS. SnapMirror and SnapVault provide replication between the 2 x SANS to minimise any data loss and allow backups to tape without from the DR site. This is established as a Metro Cluster in the primary data centre to provide immediate failover supporting the 24 x 7 x 365 requirements of users.

The Benefits to the Customer

The PCT has already seen increased flexibility as a result of the implementation.

"So far the implementation has been successful and in our experience the NetApp consultants working with Centralis were very competent providing us with reassurance that the solution would deliver as expected.  It is early days but we are confident that NetApp is an appropriate solution to support our business and we have capacity to provide additional services to local health providers with ease" concluded Bill.

As a result of the implementation Centralis was nominated for, and won, the 2010 NetApp Award for Outstanding achievement by a Silver partner.  “We are delighted to receive this award as we have put a lot of investment into incorporating NetApp into our core solution set which enables us to provide customers with end to end virtualisation solutions from the desktop through to storage." commented Rob Greenslade, Centralis Sales & Marketing Director.

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