As of next month, Maimonides will have about 1.5 Tbytes of primary SAN-attached storage. All of that is served by IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) drives, which are connected to two 18-port Gadzoox Networks Inc. (OTC: ZOOX) 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel switches.
Maimonides mirrors the SAN to an offsite data center 10 blocks away on a different power grid. That has close to 1 Tbyte running on less-expensive IBM storage. "It's been a bear to get the disaster recovery up because our priorities are always on the primary applications," Moroses says. "Disaster stuff always takes a back seat."
The first application to move to the SAN, in July 2001, was its NextGen Healthcare Information Systems Inc.'s Ambulatory Medical Records system, followed by its OB/GYN patient-tracking system. In October, the hospital will move its PeopleSoft Inc. HR and financial system to the SAN.
The remaining applications slated to move to the SAN in the next year are the hospital's picture archiving and communications system (PACS), which stores X-ray images, and its voice technology transcription system.
To manage the SAN, Maimonides picked DataCore Software Corp.'s SANsymphony. A consultant installed the software, so the hospital's IT group avoided the headache of integrating it themselves. Moroses says the decision to go with DataCore was strategic: Since the DataCore software isn't tied to any single vendor's hardware, it offers the flexibility to introduce a wide variety of hardware. One full-time IT staffer takes care of the SAN on a daily basis, with two other administrators who can step in.
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