Conwy Denbighshire Trust cures
17
backup issues
1-2-1
SNS UK talks to Andy Stott, IT systems manager, North Wales NHS Trust
(Central), finding out how his organization coped with the significant data
storage and information management challenge caused by Freedom of
Information and Data Protection Act.
AND
North Wales NHS Trust problem and needs a file access to all personal
(Central) provides acute, restored,” says Andy Stott, IT information held about them,
Y
community, mental health and systems manager, North Wales The Trust was faced with a
S
T
learning disabilities NHS Trust (Central). “Backing significant data storage and
O
T
healthcare services to central up to disk was a vast information management T
North Wales through a improvement over tape, but challenge. The Trust had an
network of hospitals, health didn’t offer the retention we obligation to ensure the data
centres and clinics. needed to serve our users stored on the new system was
and we were still running over secure and accessible by its
Employing over 5,000 staff our 12 hour backup window.” users.
with an annual turnover of
approximately £170 million, It was essential for the Trust Initially, to cope with this
the North Wales NHS Trust to upgrade its current backup challenge, the Trust looked to
(Central) provides a wide system due to problems with disk-to-disk (D2D) backup in
range of services from a speed and capacity. The Trust hope of improving its backup
network of six community also required a sophisticated window and restore speed.
hospitals, one acute in- and secure system for storing However after consultation
patient mental health unit, and backing up data including with Zycko and RISC IT, the
one community mental health dental records, theatres Trust quickly learned that
rehabilitation unit, and three management, patient records although D2D was faster, it
units for older people with and imaging systems. could barely keep two weeks
mental illness. of data on the disk before
Zycko, the value-added reaching its capacity.
The IT staff at North Wales distributor of best-in-class
NHS Trust (Central) had convergent infrastructure Alasdair Hill, RISC IT
backed up its data to tape for solutions was engaged by Solutions, explains: “North
years and had turned to disk- partner and software and Wales were using a huge
to-disk (D2D) backup in hardware solutions reseller stack of Infotrend (10TB) iSCSI
hopes of improving its backup RISC IT Solutions (formerly attach disk as a staging area
window and restore speed. Clunk Click) to install the for their Symantec
However, the medical facility ExaGrid disk-based backup environment. Prior to
quickly learned that although with data de-duplication speaking with us, the Trust
D2D was faster, it could barely solution for North Wales NHS was looking into buying yet
keep two weeks of data on Trust (Central). another 10TB stack, which
disk before reaching its would not have been cost
capacity. Key Challenges effective or addressed their
Due to the Freedom of long-term storage
“We like to have easy access Information and Data requirements.”
to 30 days worth of backup Protection Act which entitles
data in case a user notices a past and present patients Zycko and RISC IT established
aWWW.SNS-UK.CO.UK MAY 09
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