In the US healthcare sector, system failure is not an option.  Real lives depend on systems being able to function properly at all times, from diagnostic equipment being available during critical surgery to patient records being accessible by the physician.   

Systems are strictly regulated to meet mandated Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and need to be regularly tested to ensure that defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are being met. 

Cristie recently completed a large software implementation for a leading US Healthcare company who needed to replicate their physical systems to a remote data centre.  The purpose of this was to allow the customer to failover their systems and maintain operations in the event of a failure at the primary data centre.   

In addition, they wanted to be able to run Disaster Recovery (DR) tests and carry out analysis of the recovered systems, without interrupting the ongoing routine replication process. 

Here’s how our software helped them achieve their goals.  

The Use Case   

The customer had over 2,000 physical systems on-premise that they needed to be able to recover to a service provider data centre. 

The customer also needed to achieve strict RPOs in order to ensure that minimal data was lost in the event of a recovery.  The disaster recovery process needed to be tested on a monthly basis and was subject to independent audit.  
 

Starting with a backup and recovery solution  

It was clear that we needed to think of a solution that could run a continuous backup process. We needed a replication solution rather than a traditional backup.  

There was a further challenge. During the 72-hour DR tests, the replication would need to be disconnected. However, disconnecting the replication during DR testing meant that the customer was failing on their RPOs, because the application was being disrupted. This could lead to failure on the SLAs. 

How CloneManager allowed replication to continue throughout DR testing  

The customer tested several different products but CloneManager was the only software that met their needs. There was still one final challenge. The problem of failing to meet the required RPOs due to the disruption caused by the DR tests themselves.  

We developed a new feature of the software, ‘Enhanced Testing’ to meet this customer’s specific requirements, and it’s now incorporated into the standard product. Enhanced Testing creates a separate isolated DR testing environment within the physical machine at the service provider data centre.  

In this case, this allowed replication to continue as normal. It also gave our customer the ability to fire up the replicated machine at the DR site for testing and evaluation purposes. Our customer was able to prove that the DR testing was working, while continuing with the replication process. This ensured that they met their RPOs and SLAs.  

CloneManager is managed from the Cristie Virtual Appliance, allowing a single management interface to control the whole DR process if required.  

Cristie works in recovery and replication to and from physical, virtual and cloud environments, and we’re trusted by over a third of Fortune 500 companies.  

If you’d like to learn more about what we offer, click here to take a tour of our products and book a free trial.

‘ CloneManager is the best product I have found for server disaster recovery by keeping the DR side up-to-date with the production servers.’ 

Senior Systems Administrator, Global supplier to automotive industry