LifeLink Foundation Builds Virtual Data Center For Continuous Operations Using EqualLogic And VMWare

The need for more extensive disaster recovery (DR) prompted Vice President of Information Systems John Rhon to upgrade the IS environment. The primary data center is at LifeLink Foundation headquarters in Tampa, with Citrix® software managing access from remote offices. The infrastructure is Microsoft-centric, with more than 30 Windows® servers each with direct-attached storage (DAS). The Foundation's most important applications are Microsoft SQL Server-based clinical and operational databases related to transplantation and organ procurement. Other key Microsoft applications are Exchange for e-mail, Solomon and Business Portal financial applications, and SharePoint collaboration software. Before upgrading the infrastructure, each application had a dedicated server. The traditional way to implement DR was to deploy identically configured server pairs for failover – an inefficient, costly, and hard-to-manage arrangement.

The benefits to LifeLink Foundation have been extremely positive. The production environment improved business continuity with DR and failover to the local remote site. Says Rhon, "Traditional disaster recovery would have added much more complexity to our environment – the EqualLogic/VMware solution gave us DR along with simplicity. We have to prepare every time a hurricane is on the horizon – now, we're better equipped should a strong storm hit the Tampa Bay area."

LifeLink Foundation plans to purchase a third PS Series array for the LifeLink of Georgia data center that will become another DR site; then, the three sites will be able to fail over to each other, providing a higher level of data protection and business continuity. In addition, once Boot from SAN capability is implemented with VMware ESX Server 3.0, Rhon will have a completely virtual data center, ensuring 24 x 7 operations for all locations.