UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER (UPMC)
ALACRITECH CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Leading Health Care Organization Implements Alacritech Technology to Significantly Improve Server and IT Staff Efficiency

• Industry/Market:
  » Medical/Healthcare
  
• Challenge:
  » Labor and time intensive distributed local tape back up process
  » Need for capacity expansion on aging server population
  » Limited capital budget for infrastructure improvements
  
• Solution:
  » Centralized network backups with Alacritech Gigabit Accelerators
  
• Benefits:
  » Centralized backup strategy consolidated equipment and administrative efforts
  » High performance centralized tape libraries provide fast and efficient data recovery
  » Backup window reduced from 4 days to nightly for 5 TB of critical medical data
  » Server life extended for fraction of cost of new servers with Alacritech Accelerators

“To efficiently manage our large and growing amounts of critical medical data we needed to implement a networked storage strategy that would enable us to move from local tape drive back ups to a centrally managed IP-based enterprise. HP strongly recommended Alacritech’s high performance TCP accelerators to maximize server and network performance.

We now have over 100 Alacritech cards in our production servers, and we’re extremely pleased to note that we’re backing up at least 5 terabytes of data in 12 hours rather than in 4 days. Alacritech technology is now a standard item for every server install we do as it cost-effectively enables us to extend our server and IT staff resources.”
    Kevin Muha, Technical Lead, Network Server Group
    University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Business Overview:
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is the leading health care system in western Pennsylvania. With over 35,000 employees, it is one of the largest non-profit integrated health care systems in the United States. UPMC enjoys a strong national and international clinical and research reputation, drawing patients from throughout the United States and dozens of countries worldwide. UPMC has been ranked among the “best of the best” in U.S. News & World Report’s hospital ranking for the past four years.

UPMC’s consortium of health care facilities includes 20 tertiary care, specialty, and community hospitals. The health system also includes primary care and specialist physician practices, cancer care, imaging and surgery facilities, rehabilitation services, in-home services including hospice care and durable medical devices, retirement living and long-term care, pharmacy services, and an array of health insurance products.

Business Challenge:
With more than 20 hospitals and 400 additional doctor’s offices and outpatient sites spanning 29 counties in Pennsylvania, UPMC’s patient base and critical medical data is ever increasing. Known for its clinical innovation and outstanding patient care, UPMC invests millions of dollars annually to ensure quality care for its growing patient base. With the large amount critical medical data, and new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Regulations, UPMC’s IT staff planned to implement a networked storage strategy that would significantly improve its data management and back up process.

Kevin Muha, UPMC’s technical lead, is responsible for the efficient network operation of over 500 HP servers. The existing backup architecture was costly and complex, with individual tape drives attached to each server. IT staff routinely spent four days managing the backup process across the servers. During the four day backup window, it was difficult to access or recover data. Muha planned to move to a more cost-effective IP-based network backup system to enable his staff to centrally manage data. Server performance also needed to be addressed, since the extended backup window was impacting the production environment.

Alacritech Solution and Benefits:
“Our plan called for moving all our data to a central library so that we could eliminate the complicated and time consuming process required by our IT staff to manage the physical back up service,” said Kevin Muha. “In addition, we wanted a simple upgrade to maximize the performance of our large numbers of HP servers and new Gigabit Ethernet network. Mitch Brown, our HP representative, recommended Alacritech’s accelerators as the best solution for improving server efficiency, and the cards would help to facilitate rapid data migration and significantly reduce back up windows.”

"Taking HP’s recommendation, Muha deployed over 100 Alacritech accelerators across UPMC’s production servers. Alacritech Gigabit Accelerators, based on the company’s patented SLIC (Session Layer Interface Control) Technology, perform hardware protocol processing to improve server efficiency. “In the medical IT environment, it’s critical that staff have access to the data they need,” said Muha. “We’re pleased to note that we’re backing up at least 5 TB of data in 12 hours rather than in four days.”

“Alacritech cards provide an outstanding return-on-investment as the technology truly increases the performance in our Gigabit Ethernet network and enables back ups to run as they should — quickly and efficiently. We’ve succeeded in cost-effectively increasing the performance of our servers and network, as well as the productivity of our IT staff, and our patients are the end-beneficiaries.”

System Configuration: