Navicure achieves business Customer profile agility and meets data storage ® requirements Company Navicure, Inc. Industry Healthcare Country United States Employees 180 Web site navicure.com Challenge As a SaaS provider in the healthcare industry, Navicure must retain customer records for seven years. The company’s growing customer base means its need for storage capacity is constantly expanding. Its original IT infrastructure relied on outsourced Fibre Channel storage, which quickly proved too inflexible to support the business. Solution Navicure turned to on-site Dell™ EqualLogic™ iSCSI storage arrays for more flexibility. Since deploying its first Dell EqualLogic SAN several years ago, the company has kept up with business growth by adding three or four storage arrays every year. With the help of Dell Certified Partner Virtual Data Products, Navicure also deployed a VMware®-based virtual infrastructure on Dell PowerEdge™ servers. “We’ve been able to grow our environment Benefits as our customer base grows by using highly • 34 storage arrays administered scalable Dell EqualLogic storage. We have in a few hours/week • 1 hour recovery point objective (RPO) one of almost every model that EqualLogic • 1 hour recovery time objective (RTO) has ever produced, and they’re all running Application areas side-by-side.” • Disaster Recovery • End User Computing Donald Wilkins, IT Director, Navicure, Inc. • Intelligent Data Management • Virtualization Navicure, Inc. is a leading Internet- 400 terabytes of capacity. “We’ve been based medical claims clearinghouse; the able to grow our environment as our company’s goal is to make management customer base grows by using highly of accounts receivable simpler and scalable Dell EqualLogic storage,” Wilkins more profitable for physician practices. says. “We don’t have to deal so much In the process, Navicure frees up staff with forklift upgrades like we would with time so that its client organizations a traditional, frame-based SAN. As we can provide better patient care. It also add new arrays, we might move some of takes responsibility for storing vast amounts of data. “Being in healthcare, we comply with HIPAA regulations Technology at work requiring us to maintain data for seven years,” says Donald Wilkins, Navicure’s Services IT director. “As we add customers and Dell™ ProSupport™ Next Business our production environment grows, so Day do our development, testing and disaster recovery environments. Our need for Hardware storage space is constantly expanding.” Dell EqualLogic™ PS6510X, PS6510E, PS6000XV iSCSI The company’s claims-processing storage arrays platform relies on Oracle Real Application “Two of us manage Clusters (RAC) 11g database technology Dell EqualLogic FS7500 34 arrays in just on Oracle Solaris-based servers. It network-attached storage first launched the platform using Dell Latitude™ laptop computers a few hours a outsourced Fibre Channel storage, but with Intel® Core™ processors the solution couldn’t expand quickly Dell OptiPlex™ desktop computers week. The Dell or cost-effectively enough to meet EqualLogic SANs Navicure’s needs. “We estimated at the Dell PowerEdge™ R710 servers time that adding three or four terabytes with Intel Xeon® processors are very low- of usable redundant storage would cost 5600 and 5500 series us a quarter of a million dollars over the maintenance.” contract period,” Wilkins says. Software Donald Wilkins, IT Director, Dell EqualLogic Auto-Replication Navicure worked with Dell Certified Navicure, Inc. Dell EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Partner Virtual Data Products to replace Manager/VMware Edition the outsourced solution by deploying Dell EqualLogic PS series storage arrays Dell EqualLogic SAN on-premises. “We had our first EqualLogic HeadQuarters (SAN HQ) SAN up and running within 30 minutes,” Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 Wilkins reports. “Other storage vendors Oracle® Data Guard told us we would need to attend three or four days of classes to set up and Oracle Real Application Clusters use their systems, but we completely (RAC) 11gR1 familiarized ourselves with the Dell Oracle Solaris EqualLogic PS series array in a very short ® time, without training, as its user interface Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very straightforward.” VMware® vSphere 4.1 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Business agility through flexible technology Manager™ (SRM) Since its initial Dell EqualLogic deployment, Navicure has rapidly expanded its storage Windows® 7 infrastructure, adding three or four arrays Windows Server® 2008 R2 and per year. Today the company runs 34 2003 EqualLogic arrays, with a total of over 2 the older products down the line, from provided us high levels of availability, Tier 1 to Tier 2 or to our disaster recovery as well as minimizing our normal site. But the Dell EqualLogic arrays are maintenance windows.” never really outdated; we can update their firmware and keep them in the pool. The Even adding a new array takes minimal first model we bought seven years ago time. For example, Wilkins says, “we is still in service. In fact, we have one of just added a Dell EqualLogic PS6510E almost every model that EqualLogic has array with SATA disk for Tier 2 storage. ever produced, and they’re all running We racked it in half an hour, and we side-by-side.” had it added to the group roughly 15 minutes later.” The result is an agile and cost-effective storage infrastructure. “We’re continually 2-fold more virtual machines per host adjusting our IT plans to accommodate Virtual Data Products also helped growth projections for the business,” Wilkins Navicure virtualize its server infrastructure “We will be able says. “We don’t have to lock ourselves into a on Dell PowerEdge servers running certain storage technology for six or seven VMware vSphere 4.1. “We’ve worked with to manage years. Having a shorter-term perspective Virtual Data Products for many years,” the network- enables us to adapt more quickly as new Wilkins says. “They bring to the table technologies become available.” a lot of knowledge about the Dell and attached storage EqualLogic product lines, and they have The Dell EqualLogic platform also enables relationships with people who develop through the same Navicure to improve storage performance and support those products. We’re very interface as our as it expands capacity. “With a traditional pleased with the service they provide us.” SAN environment, you’re stuck with Dell EqualLogic the controllers you have,” Wilkins says. Navicure recently upgraded its legacy “Adding capacity might actually degrade server infrastructure to Dell PowerEdge SANs. This performance. But with the EqualLogic R710 servers with Intel Xeon processors. integration and architecture, adding new arrays gives us “Because we can drive more memory better performance for the SAN overall. densities on the PowerEdge R710 platform, the management Knowing we’ll get additional performance we can run about twice as many virtual and throughput when we add storage machines per physical host,” Wilkins says. capabilities were capacity is icing on the cake.” Navicure’s Oracle database continues to the main reasons run on a dedicated cluster of Solaris-based 34 arrays administered in a servers, but most of the company’s other we selected the few hours a week major applications, including Microsoft As Navicure’s storage environment Exchange Server 2010, run on Windows Dell EqualLogic has expanded, Dell EqualLogic SAN Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the FS7500 NAS.” HeadQuarters (SAN HQ) software, virtual environment. included at no extra charge, has Donald Wilkins, IT Director, streamlined storage administration. “It’s Wilkins and his team use Dell EqualLogic Navicure, Inc. true that the more arrays we add, the firmware to further streamline management more we have to manage,” Wilkins says. of the VMware environment. “We’ve taken “But that is not a problem because SAN advantage of the EqualLogic firmware’s HQ simplifies administration across ability to integrate with vSphere 4.1 and all our various arrays and because the offload some administration tasks to the EqualLogic SANs are so reliable. Two of array,” Wilkins says. “It has reduced our time us manage 34 arrays in just a few hours a to complete storage vMotion operations week. We rely on exceptions alerting to by at least half. That’s important to the get our attention when there’s an issue, business. Our IT staff always needs to do but we normally do not encounter a lot of more with less, and we’re supported in our issues. The Dell EqualLogic SANs are very ongoing march to be more efficient and low-maintenance; most of the time they more agile by the continuing evolution of run without any intervention. Our virtual the Dell EqualLogic firmware.” environment on the EqualLogic SAN has 3 1 hour RPO, 1 hour RTO people don’t choose an all-inclusive group and the management capabilities For data protection, Navicure uses pricing model like that of Dell EqualLogic.” were the main reasons that we selected VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 NAS.” (SRM), which works with the storage-level Managing NAS through snapshotting and replication built into the the SAN interface Stable, fast and highly manageable IT Dell EqualLogic arrays. Dell EqualLogic Now Navicure is transitioning from 1 For client computers, Navicure has Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition Gigabit Ethernet (1GbE) to 10 Gigabit standardized on Dell. The company (ASM/VE) takes point-in-time snapshots of Ethernet (10GbE) iSCSI connections. utilizes Dell Latitude laptop computers the virtual machines for local protection, “We had some issues getting the 1-gig and Dell OptiPlex desktop computers and the Dell EqualLogic Auto-Replication iSCSI to perform work well with the Solaris for its internal client machines. “The feature replicates them to another and Sun platform,” Wilkins says. “We’ve procurement flexibility from Dell has EqualLogic array at a disaster recovery resolved those issues by transitioning to made this a good complement to the data facility.