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Case Study • • 3 minute read

Healthcare Company: Cloud Object Storage Custom Sandbox

A US Healthcare Company addressed their CloudPools issue in days instead of weeks by leveraging the capabilities of WWT's ATC and lab services portfolio.

In this case study

 Challenge

A large US Healthcare Company relies on Dell EMC Isilon CloudPools to cost effectively manage inactive and archival data. Specifically, the Company uses CloudPools to store health logic and non-HIPAA data in Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3. Since leveraging CloudPools and AWS, the Company has seen an 80 percent reduction in inactive and archival data storage costs.

When CloudPools stopped working, the Company was faced with a critical and costly problem. Its Isilon storage system had a higher than expected capability utilization rate. Not only was the Company incurring substantial costs from storing inactive and archival data on-premise, but it was also seeing 20 percent space reduction to its primary Isilon storage pool, which had the potential to affect active data.

The Company needed a separate, non-production system to troubleshoot the CloudPools issue with Dell EMC as quickly as possible.

 Solution

Knowing we were the market leader in lab testing through our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), plus a Dell EMC Titanium Black partner and AWS Advanced Consulting Solutions partner, the Company turned to WWT for a solution.

Not only did we have an Isilon test system for troubleshooting in the ATC, but we had a system that connected to AWS.

After a quick scoping workshop to determine the infrastructure framework for a like-to-like environment, we delivered the Company with a custom sandbox for CloudPools troubleshooting in three business days.

Custom sandbox environments and many other lab services are available in the ATC, an innovation ecosystem that brings leading technologies together in a physical and virtual environment, accessible from anywhere in the world.

Through the ATC, the Company's Isilon storage administrator and other storage staff were able to quickly access their custom sandbox remotely. The environment comprised:

  • A 3-node Isilon X200 cluster.
  • A small collection of Windows and Linux virtual machines to function as test clients.
  • Outbound connectivity to an AWS S3 subscription, managed by the Company.

 Results

After experiencing the same issue with CloudPools on our test system, the Company discovered that a knowledge base (KB) article with incorrect instructions was the problem. We contacted Dell EMC for a new KB article with updated instructions.

Our custom sandbox allowed the Company to quickly validate the updated article, including that encryption functioned as outlined.

Inactive and archival data is now safely back in AWS S3 for cost savings of inactive and archival data, and the Company's Isilon system is optimized for active data performance.

 Benefits of lab services

By leveraging the capabilities of the ATC and our lab services, the Company was able to address their CloudPools issue in days instead of weeks.

We estimate it would have taken the Company several weeks to procure the hardware required to set up a sandbox similar to the one we provided in the ATC. Additionally, the Company's IT staff would have had to spend valuable engineering time setting up, configuring and reproducing the issue.

The Company relies on many critical systems to maintain its digital leadership in the healthcare industry and knows it can count on WWT to troubleshoot any issues that arise.

Technologies