Coventry and Warwickshire IT Collaborative has been working with ANS Group to improve its disaster recovery capability.
The organisation, which serves NHS Coventry and Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust, contracted the group to deliver a NetApp storage area network.
This will improve capacity and resilience at its two data centres in Coventry and Nuneaton, contribute to the requirement for the organisation to reduce its carbon footprint, and create a more flexible architecture for the addition of hardware at a later date.
Richard Newham, technical service manager for the Collaborative, said: “This latest investment in disaster recovery and improving the overall resilience of our systems will ensure that the NHS organisations that we support can continue to perform both back office tasks and front line clinical services during unexpected system failures.”
The Collaborative was formed in 2008 from two legacy organisations, from which it inherited a range of infrastructure and equipment.
It has been working to centralise and consolidate its IT resources by creating the two data centres, with a view to moving from managing desktops to running a centralised, Citrix service for its customers.
Newham said: “With a legacy SAN system that was underperforming and running out of capacity, it was decided that a new storage solution was required.”
The Collaborative invited tenders and chose NetApp from a shortlist of three, on the basis that it would be the easiest option to manage and expand in the future.
It expects a significant reduction in the amount of time spent changing backup tapes, which had risen to half a day per week.
“The NetApp solution will allow us to deliver the service that our healthcare users demand and the whole organisation should benefit from the efficiencies we achieve,” Newham said. “In addition, we know that the data is being well looked after.”
Paul Sweeney, managing director of ANS Group, said it was “delighted” to be working with the Collaborative.
Link: ANS Group