Built-in Business Continuity
A physical or virtual business continuity solution that enables you to automate movement of data can help you optimize performance and security at an acceptable cost/performance ratio, while enabling seamless failover.
For hospital data centers, virtualization can simplify disaster recovery by reducing the number of physical machines. It offers numerous ways to build a DR solution that scales alongside your virtual servers to protect your infrastructure and maintain access to, and security of, patient data.
Unlike traditional environments, virtualization allows you to consolidate multiple applications on a single machine in the recovery data center for maximum efficiency. The ability to recover quickly from failure is a huge benefit.
Although a virtual machine (VM) is independent of the physical hardware that it’s running on, you still need protection against failures within physical server hardware. Reducing the amount of hardware means that the availability of each physical server becomes more important. Loss of a server within a virtualized environment affects each VM running on the platform. This must be factored into business continuity planning.
Integrating DR capabilities into your virtual environment from day one lets you take advantage of the scalability that virtualization offers. A key strategy is to look at virtualization and DR as a combined unit. Put aside the notion that disaster recovery means a 1:1 ratio of live to redundant machines. What you really need is a flexible solution that grows to match your requirements as they evolve.
Plan for Power
Comprehensive emergency power systems—including uninterruptable power supplies for healthcare modalities, server rooms, network closets, and data centers—support IT availability and reduce the likelihood that a power failure will put patients at risk and damage sensitive equipment. These systems ensure a reliable, 24/7 power supply while reducing energy consumption and delivering uninterrupted power for medical equipment and critical care, precise temperature, airflow, and humidity control.