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Hospital Baptizes SAN on Optical: Page 5 of 5

By using clustering software running on IBM AIX, Baptist Health hopes to achieve "true business continuity" by clustering servers in its two data centers over the Nortel DWDM network by virtually mirroring the IP addresses of those servers. This, Billingsley notes, is an even more complex setup than mirroring data. "You can't just do the apps. You also have to consider the servers, the network, and the other applications," he says.

The good news is that out of the hospital group's experience, McKesson and EMC have developed a model about how to implement site-to-site replication at other hospitals. "Everyone tells us we're the first ones in health care to pull this off," Billingsley says. "We learned some hard lessons, but our ultimate goal is to make sure we don't run into the same issues."

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch