EMC BUSINESS RECOVERY SOLUTION FOR MEDITECH · PDF fileWhite Paper . EMC Solutions Group . Abstract . This white paper describes how the EMC Business Recovery Solution for MEDITECH

White Paper

EMC Solutions Group

Abstract

This white paper describes how the EMC Business Recovery Solution for MEDITECH improves the backup and disaster recovery processes for MEDITECH users. This solution maintains service level agreements and improves overall user experience for MEDITECH EHR/HCIS using EMC backup technologies and Cisco compute power.

October 2011

EMC BUSINESS RECOVERY SOLUTION FOR MEDITECH With VMware vSphere, EMC VNX5700, Data Domain, NetWorker NMMEDI, FAST VP, RecoverPoint, and Cisco UCS

• Faster backup and recovery of MEDITECH Client Server 6.0—in minutes or hours, not days

• Minimize backup windows to reduce impact on your application and system availability

• Recover data quickly and accurately with built-in hardware redundancy and RAID protection

EMC Business Recovery Solution for MEDITECH 2

Copyright © 2011 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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Part Number H8884

3 EMC Business Recovery Solution for MEDITECH

Table of contents

Executive summary ............................................................................................................... 5

Business case .................................................................................................................................. 5

Solution overview ............................................................................................................................ 5

Solution benefits ............................................................................................................................. 6

Key results ....................................................................................................................................... 6

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 7

Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 7

Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 7

Terminology ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Solution components ............................................................................................................ 9

Overview .......................................................................................................................................... 9

EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH .............................................................................................. 9

EMC RecoverPoint ............................................................................................................................ 9

EMC VNX series storage platform ................................................................................................... 11

EMC FAST Suite and Unisphere ...................................................................................................... 11

EMC Data Domain deduplication storage system with Data Domain Boost ..................................... 11

VMware vSphere ............................................................................................................................ 12

Cisco Unified Computing System.................................................................................................... 12

Configuration ...................................................................................................................... 13

Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 13

Solution architecture...................................................................................................................... 13

Hardware resources................................................................................................................... 14

Software resources .................................................................................................................... 15

SAN network architecture ............................................................................................................... 15

MEDITECH Disaster Recovery configuration with RecoverPoint ........................................................ 16

Special configuration for more than 255 LUNs ........................................................................... 16

EMC NetWorker backup configuration ............................................................................................ 17

Storage configuration ..................................................................................................................... 18

Cisco UCS configuration ................................................................................................................. 19

Validation and testing ......................................................................................................... 20

Testing methodology ...................................................................................................................... 20

VNX5700 CRR results ..................................................................................................................... 21

VNX 5700 CDP results .................................................................................................................... 21

Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 22


Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 23

Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 23

Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 23

References .......................................................................................................................... 25

White papers ................................................................................................................................. 25

Product documentation .................................................................................................................. 25


Executive summary

To increase the quality of healthcare, hospitals and other healthcare providers are investing in solutions that help achieve greater integration between electronic health records (EHR) and other applications. As the volume of patient information stored and archived online continues to grow at a rate of close to 70 percent each year, companies are deploying virtualization technologies to help manage servers, storage, desktops, and clinical and business applications.

In addition to meeting enhanced HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations and delivering 24x7 patient care, healthcare providers must build disaster recovery plans that include:

• Quickly recovering from unplanned outages

• Optimizing the backup and recovery of their data

As application integration increases and the quantity of PHI (protected health information) stored and archived online continues to grow, healthcare organizations and IT partners are demanding end-to-end backup and disaster recovery solutions to support their mission-critical application environments.

The EMC Business Recovery solution for MEDITECH provides a, highly automated, tightly integrated, and optimized information infrastructure for backup and disaster recovery to MEDITECH MAGIC, Client Server, and Client Server 6.0 applications. It does this by harnessing the power of:

• EMC unified storage platforms and business recovery capabilities

• VMware virtual data center operating system and proactive automated management

• Cisco Systems High-Density UCS Server with balanced computing performance and I/O flexibility

MEDITECH, a strategic EMC Healthcare ISV partner, and EMC have collaborated to integrate and validate this solution in the EMC Solutions Lab for optimum functionality, performance, and scalability.

EMC Data Domain deduplication systems reduce the size of the backup datasets by ratios of 10 to 30 times smaller than the original datasets, allowing customers to retain backups onsite longer, restore their data more quickly, and replicate data offsite more efficiently over IP network links. This backup solution leverages fully virtualized deduplication and compression capabilities for MEDITECH’s EHR-generated patient data, reducing the time, network load, and storage capacity required for their user backups.

This solution also leverages EMC® RecoverPoint for continuous replication and recovery operations. EMC NetWorker® Module for MEDITECH (NMMEDI) works in conjunction with NetWorker to schedule, create, and manage either local or remote replicas of MEDITECH data segments.

Business case

Solution overview


The EMC Business Recovery solution for MEDITECH provides hospitals and other care delivery organizations with a powerful, fully-virtualized backup and recovery solution for the MEDITECH environment. Users of this next-generation backup and recovery solution can leverage fully-virtualized deduplication for their EHR generated patient data. This reduces the time, network load, and storage capacity needs of users to perform backups, resulting in cost savings and operations that are more efficient.

EMC data deduplication provides an enabling technology for next-generation data protection solutions. By reducing the size of backup datasets by ratios of 10 to 30 times, backups can be retained on site longer for fast operational restores, and replicated offsite efficiently over existing network links.

MEDITECH users can leverage EMC Data Domain® to help manage their backup and recovery operations in a virtualized environment. Solution benefits include:

• Faster backups and recovery — Meet more aggressive backup windows and restore MEDITECH Client Server 6.0 in minutes, not days.

• Reduced backup windows — Minimize backup windows to reduce impact on your application and system availability.

• Reduced business risk — Restore data quickly and accurately with built-in hardware redundancy through RAID protection.

• Improved IT efficiency and reduced costs — Save hours of staff time and boost user productivity by creating a highly-automated, virtualized, and highly-utilized infrastructure for your MEDITECH applications that matches infrastructure costs with changing information value by using efficient, cost-effective tiered storage and deduplication.

Solution benefits

Key results


Introduction

This white paper describes EMC's unique solution for meeting MEDITECH customers specific needs for storage, data backup and restore, and disaster recovery. It describes the Business Recovery Solution for MEDITECH enabled by the EMC VNX™ series with FAST VP, Data Domain, NetWorker, NMMEDI, RecoverPoint, VMware, and Cisco UCS and the testing of this solution for MEDITECH certification. This white paper also describes the results of that testing.

This white paper includes results from backing up MEDITECH data, using EMC VNX unified storage with Data Domain and Data Doman (DD) Boost, RecoverPoint, NetWorker NMMEDI, and Cisco UCS.

This document is intended for the EMC Global Practice, Product Engineering, Field Council, Global Solutions, Marketing, and Demo teams, EMC Training and Services organizations, as well as current and prospective MEDITECH HCIS customers who are responsible for providing an IT infrastructure for clinical applications.

Table 1 defines some of the key terms used in this paper.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Definition

Application-aware integration

Application-aware integration creates intelligent bookmarks for replication and CDP with application integration capabilities that leverage vendor supplied APIs, such as Oracle Hot Backup.

EHR Electronic health record.

EMR Electronic medical record. The legal patient record created in hospitals and ambulatory environments that is the data source for the EHR.

EPR Electronic patient record

HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Integrated disaster recovery (IDR)

MEDITECH’s term for disaster recovery. IDR extends ISB to create application consistent disaster recovery (DR) images so that the environment can be recovered.

Integrated serverless backup (ISB)

MEDITECH term for data backup and recovery. ISB backs up MEDITECH save sets using a proprietary API for placing MEDITECH’s database into hot backup mode.

PHI Protected health information

Policy-based management

Policy-based management enables optimization of storage and network resources to meet service level agreements (SLAs) by managing recovery-point objectives (RPOs) and recovery-time objectives (RTOs) across multiple applications and their data.

Purpose

Scope

Audience

Terminology


Term Definition

RecoverPoint continuous data protection (CDP)

CDP provides block-level local replication between LUNs in the SAN using CDP technology that journals every write for later recovery to any point in time.

RecoverPoint continuous local and remote replication (CLR)

CLR provides simultaneous block-level local replication and dynamic synchronous and asynchronous block-level remote replication for LUNs with one copy residing locally in the same SAN journaling every write, and the second copy residing remotely in a different SAN journaling significant groups of writes. Recovering one copy can occur without affecting the other copy.

RecoverPoint continuous remote replication (CRR)

Provides dynamic synchronous and asynchronous block-level remote replication between LUNs in two different SANs using near-CDP technology that journals groups of writes for later recovery to significant points in time.

Unified replication RecoverPoint supports EMC and non-EMC storage arrays, including the VNX5100, VNX5300, VNX5500, VNX5700, and VNX7500 for local and remote replication of block LUNs. RecoverPoint supports all LUN types, including thinly provisioned LUNs, spin down LUNs, and compressed LUNs for bi directional local and remote replication.

The NAS file systems of the VNX series storage arrays and the VNX gateway products can be replicated by RecoverPoint/SE for cabinet-level failover. RecoverPoint/SE supports bi-directional replication of NAS file systems for disaster recovery.


Solution components

This solution includes the following components.

• EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH

• EMC RecoverPoint

• EMC VNX Series Storage Platform

• EMC FAST Suite and Unisphere™

• EMC Data Domain Deduplication Storage System with DD Boost

• VMware vSphere

• Cisco Unified Computing System

The EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH leverages MEDITECH’s ISB backup API to provide application consistent backups and disaster recovery images. Integrated Serverless Backup (ISB) is incorporated into the EMC NetWorker information protection strategy. MEDITECH ISB provides a system backup process through an API to support replication technologies for the EMC VNX series storage system. ISB provides the mechanism to request an application-consistent replication of the databases, which enables the NetWorker Module for MEDITECH for backups. Integrated Disaster Recovery (IDR) enables NetWorker to leverage RecoverPoint’s advanced journaling capability to have MEDITECH application consistency. This solution supports and enhances both ISB and IDR to allow flexibility for creating disaster recovery solutions, to simplify the automation of application consistent DR copies, and to restore data to either the original location or any designated target.

The EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH is used in conjunction with NetWorker to schedule, create, and manage either local or remote replicas of MEDITECH data segments. NetWorker is fully integrated with the MEDITECH Integrated Serverless Backup (ISR) application to enable system administrators to perform normal scheduled NetWorker save set backups and also to create disaster recovery replicas of the data without interrupting the application.

With this module, healthcare IT can create local or remote replicas, view backup and restore process information, and recover to the main host from any generation of the data. EMC RecoverPoint CDP provides an advanced enterprise-class disaster solution supporting heterogeneous MEDITECH storage and server environments, providing, together with Networker, a full-featured replication and continuous data protection solution. RecoverPoint allows geographically dispersed Microsoft failover clusters to replicate their MEDITECH data.

EMC RecoverPoint together with NetWorker provides a disaster recovery solution for MEDITECH storage and server environments. RecoverPoint CDP provides continuous data protection locally while RecoverPoint CRR provides concurrent remote replication and data protection of the same data volume over any distance.

EMC RecoverPoint and EMC RecoverPoint/SE are comprehensive data protection solutions for enterprise and commercial customers, providing integrated continuous

Overview

EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH

EMC RecoverPoint


data protection and continuous remote replication to recover applications to any point in time.

RecoverPoint systems enable the reliable replication of data over any distance:

• Within the same site (CDP)

• To another distant site (CRR)

• Both concurrently (CLR)

Specifically, RecoverPoint offers a comprehensive set of replication capabilities across heterogeneous storage systems to provide continuous data protection and remote replication for business continuity and disaster recovery. RecoverPoint/SE offers the same advanced replication functionality across EMC CLARiiON®, EMC Celerra®, and EMC VNX series storage systems.

Table 2 lists the features and their capabilities in both RecoverPoint/SE and RecoverPoint

Table 2. EMC RecoverPoint features and capabilities

Feature RecoverPoint/SE RecoverPoint

Number of RecoverPoint appliances per cluster

2-8 2-8

Max Number of MEDITECH hosts supported per cluster

128 128

Max LUNs supported per RecoverPoint cluster

2048 2048

Max amount of protected data

300 TB

(depends on array)

600 TB

(controlled by license)

Max number of arrays supported

CDP:1

CRR or CLR:2

N/A

Max LUN size

(array based splitter)

32 TB 32 TB

Max LUN size

(all other write splitters)

2 TB (less 512 bytes) 2 TB (less 512 bytes)

Number of consistency groups per appliance

64 64

Number of consistency groups per RecoverPoint cluster

128 128

Number of distributed consistency groups per RecoverPoint cluster

8 8


Feature RecoverPoint/SE RecoverPoint

Write splitters Array-based write splitter and Windows host-based write splitter

All write splitters

Number of clusters attached to a single array

4 arrays supported by array-based write splitter, 1 for other arrays

4 arrays supported by array-based write splitter, 1 for other arrays

The EMC VNX series of storage platforms provides a dedicated network server optimized for file and block storage access which delivers high-end features in a scalable, easy-to-use package. With a single-box block and file solution with a central management point for distributed environments, it is possible to dynamically grow, share, and cost-effectively manage multiprotocol file systems and provide multiprotocol block access. Administrators can also take advantage of simultaneous support for NFS and CIFS protocols. Storage management is simplified with EMC Unisphere for VNX by providing a single management framework for any NAS, SAN, and replication needs.

EMC FAST Cache, an extendable cache of up to 2 TB, gives a real-time performance boost by ensuring that the hottest data is served from the highest performing Flash drives for as long as needed. FAST VP then complements FAST Cache by optimizing storage pools on a regular, scheduled basis. The user defines how and when data is tiered using policies that dynamically move the most active data to high-performance drives (such as Flash), and less active data to high-capacity drives, all in 1 GB increments for both block and file data. Together, they automatically optimize for the highest system performance and the lowest storage cost simultaneously.

EMC Data Domain systems deduplicate the backups of patient data. This significantly reduces the amount of storage capacity required to keep backups online longer, as needed to meet HIPAA requirements.

DD Boost is an auxiliary piece of software that customers implement as an agent on the backup server. DD Boost enacts a process that checks for data segments that are already stored and eliminates the need to send them to the Data Domain backup device. Doing this on the NetWorker backup platform offloads the deduplication activity and eliminates the need to send redundant data to the Data Domain appliance, reducing the amount of bandwidth required to move backup data across the network. Typically, enacting the DD boost software can speed up the deduplication and backup by up to 50 percent. Both Data Domain systems are ‘cpu-bound’ meaning that they can leverage the power of Intel Xeon server processors for performance, reducing the need for additional disk spindles to speed up the backup process.

Deduplicated data can be stored on-site for immediate restores and longer-term retention on disk. The deduplicated data can also be replicated over the WAN to a remote site for disaster recovery operations, eliminating the need for tape-based backups, or for consolidating tape backups to a central location.

EMC VNX series storage platform

EMC FAST Suite and Unisphere

EMC Data Domain deduplication storage system with Data Domain Boost


VMware vSphere is the industry-leading virtualization platform for building cloud infrastructures. VMware is a trusted virtualization platform offering the highest levels of availability and responsiveness. VMware and EMC work together to build solutions that enable healthcare providers to reduce information technology (IT) complexity and increase responsiveness to new business needs

The Cisco Unified Computing System is a data center platform that unites compute, network, storage access, and virtualization into a cohesive system designed to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. The system integrates a low-latency, lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric with enterprise-class, x86-architecture servers. The system is an integrated, scalable, multi-chassis platform in which all resources participate in a unified management domain.

VMware vSphere

Cisco Unified Computing System


Configuration

This section contains information about the following:

• Solution architecture

• SAN network architecture

• MEDITECH RecoverPoint configuration

• Backup configuration

• Cisco UCS configuration

Figure 1 shows the solution architecture.

Figure 1. Solution architecture

Overview

Solution architecture


Hardware resources Table 3 lists the hardware used in this solution.

Table 3. Solution hardware

Hardware Quantity Configuration

Cisco UCS B230 Blade Server system with 8 B230-M1 compute blades

1 • Two 10-GigE network uplink

• Four 4-GB FC SAN connections.

• Each B230 blade has:

2 Intel® Xeon® X7560 @ 2.266 Ghz

196 GB of memory

Cisco MDS 9506 Fibre Director

2 • 8 GB FC SAN connectivity

Cisco Nexus 5010 1 • 10 GigE network connectivity

Cisco Catalyst 3560e 2 • 48-port Ethernet switch

VNX5700 1 • 21 200-GB SSD drives

• 460 300-GB SAS drives

VNX5500 1 • 16 200-GB SSD drives

• 220 300-GB SAS drives

RecoverPoint appliances 14 • Gen4 running latest 3.4 code

Data Domain DD860 1 • DDOS 5.0

• 40 TB of usable capacity

• 4 disk shelves with DD Boost license

Intel-based server (NetWorker server)

1 • 2 Intel Xeon X5570 @ 2.93 Ghz

• 16 GB of memory

• One Ethernet connection

• One 10-GigE Ethernet connection

• Four 8-GB FC SAN connections


Software resources Table 4 lists the software used in this solution

Table 4. Solution software

Software Version

MEDITECH • MAGIC

• Client Server

• Client Server 6.0

EMC NetWorker (server and storage node) 7.6 SP2

EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH (NMMEDI) 3.0

EMC Data Domain Boost 2.3.1

PowerPath VE 5.4 SP2

PowerPath for Windows 5.5

VMware vSphere ESX 4.1 Update 1

MEDITECH/NetWorker OS Windows 2008 R2 x64

Data Domain 860 Data Domain OS 5.0

RecoverPoint 3.4

VNX5500 OE 5.31.000.5.011

VNX5700 OE 5.31.000.5.008

This solution uses redundant 8-GB director-class Fibre Channel switches to connect the VNX storage array, RecoverPoint, NetWorker server, and UCS. Production server initiators were zoned to dedicated storage ports to isolate the NetWorker and RecoverPoint SAN traffic from the production data flow.

Dual 1-GigE network switches were used for management and RecoverPoint replication traffic. UCS, NetWorker, and Data Domain used 10 GigE for connectivity.

SAN network architecture


The RecoverPoint configuration consists of 14 Gen-4 appliances built into two seven-node clusters. The clusters perform their WAN communication over a Gigabit Ethernet switch. Each cluster is zoned to a UCS for compute resources. Site 1 is zoned to a VNX5700 and Site 2 is zoned to a VNX5500 for storage.

Figure 2 shows the setup used to test both CDP and CRR configurations of varying number of virtual machines using remote data managers (RDMs) as source LUNs.

Figure 2. MEDITECH RecoverPoint configuration

Each RecoverPoint appliance provides four physical Fibre Channel ports that are auto-sensing, supporting two-, four-, and eight-GB/s connections. Each RecoverPoint appliance provides two 100/1000 Ethernet ports. One Ethernet port is used for management and monitoring and the other port is used for remote replication over the WAN. Hosts and arrays are connected to the RecoverPoint appliance using standard Fibre Channel SANs, enabling host fan-in and array fan-out.

Special configuration for more than 255 LUNs When creating a large number of consistency groups, you may reach the RecoverPoint maximum of 255 LUNS. To work around this limitation on an EMC VNX system, follow these steps:

1. Create a new storage group.

2. Reconfigure the RPAs to add virtual WWPNs. (Reference EMC Knowledgebase solution emc225147).

3. Zone the new virtual WWPNs to the storage array.

4. Register the new virtual WWPNs with a different IP address than the original RPA registration.

5. Add the just registered RPAs to the new storage group.

MEDITECH Disaster Recovery configuration with RecoverPoint


The backup environment uses EMC NetWorker and NetWorker Module for MEDITECH (NWMEDI) with DD Boost to back up MEDITECH data to the Data Domain DD860 appliance. Figure 3 shows the backup environment configured for this solution. The data flows from the storage array through four 8-GB fiber connections to the NetWorker storage node. The data is then deduplicated and compressed through the DD Boost configuration on the NetWorker storage node and passed to the Data Domain DD860 through a single 10-Gb Ethernet connection.

Figure 3. Backup environment

EMC NetWorker, along with the NMMEDI, enables system administrators to schedule NetWorker save-set backups and create disaster recovery data replicas without interrupting the application. Because the backup and mirroring processes now occur on the backup server and not the MEDITECH server, the system resources are available to the applications, which will no longer experience performance degradation while the backups are running.

The role of the NetWorker server is to communicate with the NetWorker clients in the MEDITECH environment, initiate the ISB backups, and manage and monitor the backup activity. In this design, the NetWorker server is also the NetWorker storage node.

Another NetWorker storage node role is to write the data to the Data Domain DD860 during the backup and read data from the Data Domain DD860 during a restore. The storage node also sends the tracking information back to the NetWorker server.

EMC NetWorker backup configuration


The Data Domain DD860 appliance stores the backup data so that administrators can restore that data when necessary.

EMC DD Boost extends the backup optimization benefits beyond Data Domain deduplication features by distributing parts of the deduplication process to the backup server. There are 20 DD Boost devices associated with the 10 GB network. Administrative traffic used a separate 1 GB network connection.

To test this solution, we configured 100 clients each with 200 GB of storage and backed up those clients using the above configuration. We easily met the SLA, which is to complete the backup of 20 TB of data in less than 4 hours.

This section describes the MEDITECH disk pool layouts used for VNX5700 FAST VP Auto-Tiering testing.

A pool is a collection of disks that can share the storage load and the distribution of that load depends on the nature of the data. As in this scenario, multiple disk technologies, or tiers (Flash and SAS) can exist in the same pool. The diagrams also present disk speeds, RAID protection, and number of volumes created within each pool.

Figure 4 shows the storage configurations for 100 virtual servers with RecoverPoint CRR configured with FAST VP using three disk pools: one for the production database volumes, one for the RecoverPoint journal, and one for the clone pool.

With RecoverPoint CRR, local SnapView™ clones are used as the source for the backup. When there is a RecoverPoint copy available (as in CDP), we use that as the backup source.

Figure 4. Continuous remote replication storage configuration

Storage configuration


Figure 5 shows the storage configuration for 70 virtual servers with RecoverPoint CDP configured with three disk pools; one for the production database volumes, one for the RecoverPoint journal, and one for the clone pool.

Figure 5. Continuous data protection storage configuration

A single UCS 5108 chassis with eight B230-M1 blade servers were used to simulate the MEDITECH Client Server 100-file server environment. We installed VMWare 4.1 (update 1) on each blade server. We configured the VMFS data stores to host the production root volume and mounted the database volume as a raw device mapping (RDM). Figure 6 shows the virtual machine layout for the 100-virtual machine test. For the 70 servers, we used only six blades.

Figure 6. Virtual machine layout

Cisco UCS configuration


Validation and testing

For testing the VNX5700, MEDITECH provided the test suite for the database load simulation and captured the application performance data using MEDITECH’s proprietary certification suite. The EMC Solution Team captured all performance metrics related to EMC hardware and software and collected UCS data using performance-monitoring tools to collect statistics from the virtualization environment (vSphere).

The team conducted the tests according to MEDITECH’s pass/fail criteria, with MEDITECH auditing all tests. This resulted in a successful MEDITECH certified solution and included the following.

• Application read/write response times were well-within MEDITECH pass/fail criteria.

• The integrated serverless backup (ISB) was within the required time frame and did not affect application performance.

• The Integrated disaster recovery did not exceed MEDITECH’s threshold.

The EMC team successfully ran all backups with no impact to the applications and within an acceptable timeframe. To complete the tests we used the following methodology:

1. Independently ran each targeted workload for all of the MEDITECH applications, including MAGIC, Client Server, and Client Server 6.0.

2. Ran ISB (Integrated Serverless Backup) backup in coordination with NetWorker Module for MEDITECH.

3. Measured and collected MEDITECH application response times with Windows performance monitor.

4. Measured and collected backup runtime statistics with NetWorker backup logs.

5. Ran three consecutive IDRs (Integrated Disaster Recoveries) in coordination with NetWorker Module for MEDITECH.

6. Measured and collected MEDITECH application response times with Windows performance monitor.

7. Measured and collected backup runtime with NetWorker backup logs.

8. Convert to the next workload and retest.

Testing methodology


For the VNX5700 CRR test, we configured the NetWorker Module for MEDITECH for ISB-based backups using production SnapView clones as the source for the backups and mounted clones to the NetWorker/DD Boost host. This provides complete physical isolation from MEDITECH production volumes for all backup processes. Table 5 shows the backup results for this configuration.

Table 5. VNX5700 CRR test results

# of servers Total backup time Backup size (GB)

End-to-end MB/sec (backup and lag*)

End-to-end GB/hour (backup and lag*)

100 (MAGIC) 2 hours 24 minutes 20,500 2372.7 8541.7

100 (C/S) 2 hours 27 minutes 20,500 2324.3 8367.3

100 (C/S 6.0) 2 hours 43 minutes 20,500 2096.1 7546.0

*The backup and lag is the time to perform the backup plus post processing activities.

The 100-server production workload was approximately 28,000 IOPS during these tests.

The NetWorker host’s fiber connectivity served as the read path for the VNX SnapView clones. DD Boost was configured on the NetWorker host to forward the deduplicated/compressed data to the Data Domain 860 through a single 10-GbE network interface. This resulted in a peak backup rate of 2.9 GB per second.

For the VNX5700 CDP test, we configured NMMEDI for IDR-based backups using production RecoverPoint bookmarks as the source for the backups. As with CRR, this also provides physical isolation from MEDITECH production volumes for all backup processes. We created three consecutive RecoverPoint bookmarks at set intervals to be backed up by NMMEDI. Table 6 shows the backup results using this configuration.

Table 6. VNX 5700 CDP test results

# of servers Total backup time (minutes)

Backup size (GB)

End-to-end MB/sec (backup and lag*)

End-to-end GB/hour (backup and lag*)

70 (MAGIC) 2 hours 20 minutes 14,350 1708.3 6150.0

70 (C/S) 2 hours 20 minutes 14,350 1708.3 6150.0

70 (C/S 6.0) 2 hours 29 minutes 14,350 1605.1 5778.5

*The backup and lag is the time to perform the backup plus post processing activities.

The 70-server production workload was approximately 19,600 IOPS during these tests.

VNX5700 CRR results

VNX 5700 CDP results


When backups are configured for a RecoverPoint CDP, NMMEDI supports the use of backing up direct from the CDP copy. NMMEDI completes the backup based on MEDITECH-generated RecoverPoint bookmarks. A backup window of less than 5 hours is generally considered acceptable for most enterprises. This solution was able to far exceed most expectations finishing in a little more than 2 hours.

Based on a 20-TB data set, there was very little variation between the application workload profiles of MAGIC, which is mostly read intensive, and the Client/Server 6.0 configuration, which is mostly write intensive. The criteria for ISB backups was to ensure the backup cycles lasted no longer than MEDITECH’s specifications. Our results were well within the acceptable timeframe, as shown in Table 5 and Table 6.

When comparing the two production MEDITECH applications, MAGIC and C/S 6.0, MAGIC is read-intensive, while C/S 6.0 is write-intensive, showing both ends of the spectrum in our tests. Despite the workload profile, the array was still able to achieve a peak backup speed of 2.9 GB/s without any impact to the production response times.

In a hospital production environment, there is no room for downtime or performance hits during the backup window. Our tests confirm that backup times are done quick and without any noticeable impacts to the MEDITECH application production SLAs.

Findings


Conclusion

The components in this solution provide comprehensive coverage for protection, performance, and scalability. EMC NetWorker with the NetWorker Module for MEDITECH (NMMEDI), DD Boost, and Data Domain drastically reduced backup windows and maintained the application SLAs for the backup cycles. RecoverPoint provides disaster recovery and an additional level of data protection. Hosting 100 virtual MEDITECH Client Server servers on a Cisco UCS running vSphere connected to a VNX5700 with FAST VP showcases the scalability and ease of management of large MEDITECH deployments.

In summary, the benefits of each component that is part of this solution include:

• NetWorker with NMMEDI module—The EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH extends support to the MEDITECH software solution allowing NetWorker to schedule, create, and manage replicas of MEDITECH databases.

• DD Boost substantially reduces the backup window, increases aggregate throughput, and improves backup server efficiency—all using an IP network. As shown in this solution, DD Boost accelerated the data received from the NMMEDI module and transported the optimized data over the IP network, which was not possible in previous MEDITECH backup solutions (previous MEDITECH backup solutions were all SAN based).

• RecoverPoint provides application consistency and real-time replication disaster recovery to MEDITECH CS servers. The NMMEDI module allows MEDITECH’s ISB server to create point-in-time restore points with RecoverPoint to allow quick recovery.

• VNX5700—The VNX is the next generation unified storage system optimized for virtualized applications. Using Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) allows MEDITECH to have the highest system performance and lowest storage cost available. While testing this solution, we were able to maintain 28,000 IOPS to the application while also providing 2.9 GB/s throughput for the backup with the array utilization at 70 percent.

• Cisco UCS—The Cisco Unified Computing System is a next-generation data center platform that unites compute, network, storage access, and virtualization into a cohesive system. In this solution, the Cisco UCS enabled us to virtualize the MEDITECH server tier, thus providing easy provisioning services and management for large MEDITECH implementations.

We found a significant reduction in backup time without reducing application response times by deploying NetWorker, NMMEDI, and DD Boost along with the 10-GigE backup infrastructure. This produced numbers that were unprecedented in a MEDITECH environment:

• A backup window of less than 5 hours is generally considered to be acceptable for most enterprises.

• This solution was able to far exceed most expectations finishing all test configurations in less than 3 hours.

Summary

Findings


• Backing up MEDITECH databases of 20 TB in less than 3 hours with a peak throughput of 2.89 GB/s confirms this solution can back up large datasets very efficiently and well within the MEDITECH certification requirements.


References

For additional information, refer to the EMC Unified Storage Best Practices for Performance and Availability Common Platform and Block Storage 31.0—Applied Best Practices (P/N h8268) at http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8268-vnx-block-best-practices.pdf

For additional information, see the product documents listed below.

• EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH 3.0 Administration Guide

• EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH 3.0 Installation Guide

• EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH 3.0 Release Notes

• EMC NetWorker 7.6 Service Pack 2 Installation Guide

• EMC NetWorker 7.6 Service Pack 2 Administration Guide

• EMC NetWorker 7.6 Service Pack 2 Performance Optimization Planning Guide

• EMC Data Domain 5.0 Administration Guide

• EMC RecoverPoint Release 3.4 CLI Reference Guide

• EMC RecoverPoint Deployment Manager Release 1.0 Product Guide

• EMC RecoverPoint Release 3.4 Release Notes

White papers

Product documentation

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8268-vnx-block-best-practices.pdf�

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8268-vnx-block-best-practices.pdf�

Documents

EMC BUSINESS RECOVERY SOLUTION FOR MEDITECH · PDF fileWhite Paper . EMC Solutions Group . Abstract . This white paper describes how the EMC Business Recovery Solution for MEDITECH