NetApp Success Story - Carestream Dental Takes a Bite Out of ...

Success StoryCarestream Dental Takes aBite Out of Storage-RelatedCosts with NetAppAnother NetAppsolution delivered by:KEY HIGHLIGHTSIndustryHealthcareThe ChallengeReduce maintenance costs,improve storage efficiency, andsimplify IT management.The SolutionReplace aging EMC systemswith NetApp ® shared storageinfrastructure.Benefits• Achieved more than 100%utilization for storage capacity• Reduced data center floorspace consumption by 50%• Cut QA and product developmenttime by at least12.5 hours per day• Reduced restore time fromhours or days to minutes, andvirtually eliminated downtime• Reduced IT management timeCustomer ProfileCarestream Dental LLC, the exclusivemanufacturer of KODAK Dental Systems,offers imaging and practice managementsystems in the United States andCanada that enable dental and oralhealth professionals to easily captureand share images, streamline theirworkflow, and enhance patient care.Carestream Dental LLC is part ofthe global dental systems group ofCarestream Health, Inc.The ChallengeUpgrade an aging, costly-to-maintainstorage environmentCarestream Dental relies on its storageenvironment to support everythingfrom internal systems and databasesto hosted customer services to productdevelopment and QA. Explains RobSmith, infrastructure supervisor forCarestream Dental, “When our systemsare down, our salespeople can’t pullCRM information, our clients can’t runtheir offices the way they want to, ourback-end processes stop—it’s verydetrimental to our business.” When thecompany’s aging storage environmentat its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia—including a Data Domain applianceused to store two weeks of backupdata, an EMC CLARiiON CX500 forFibre Channel, and the EMC Celerrabolt-on for NFS/CIFS support, eachmanaged through a separate interface—ledto rising maintenance costs,storage processes going offline, andnear-weekly disk failures, the companyknew it was time for an upgrade.In addition to improving uptime and reliability,reducing costs, and simplifyingmaintenance, Carestream Dentalneeded a storage environment thatworked well with the VMware ® solutionsbeing implemented for a large-scalevirtualization initiative. The ability tosupport an IP-based architecture wasalso key. “Moving to IP-based storageover 10-gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) wouldlet us get rid of a lot of specialized FibreChannel equipment and use the samedevices to carry all kinds of traffic, notjust storage,” says Smith.The SolutionMigrate to a virtualized environmenton IP-based NetApp storage systemsCarestream Dental developed the planfor its storage upgrade in collaborationwith Presidio Networked Solutions, Inc.,

“NetApp helps improve our businessbecause we are able to get ourproducts out to our customersthat much faster.”Rob SmithInfrastructure Supervisor, Carestream Dental LLCa leading provider of business enablementsolutions and a participant in theNetApp Partner Program. “I considerPresidio to be our technology partner,”says Smith. “They’re always up to dateon new technologies and able to findthe right people and resources toaddress our needs.”While Presidio and Carestream Dentalinitially discussed using a NetAppV3140 storage controller with 40TB ofFibre Channel disk space to front-endits legacy EMC boxes, the companyultimately decided to decommission itsEMC storage entirely and replace it withall NetApp storage, including 68TB ofSATA disk, for a total of 108TB. Deduplicationwas not an option on its oldEMC systems, but today CarestreamDental uses NetApp deduplicationtechnology to remove redundant dataand boost storage efficiency across allof its NetApp storage. Consequently,the company was also able to decommissionthe Data Domain appliance,which could deduplicate archived databut not live data.Says Smith, “Our NetApp systems providea single storage platform with all theprotocols and features we need, includingiSCSI, NFS, CIFS, deduplication,and replication, all with a small footprintand simplified management.” As part ofthe implementation, Carestream Dentalworked with Presidio to migrate its FibreChannel architecture to a completelyIP-based storage environment runningentirely on NFS over 10GbE, on a pairof Cisco Nexus 5020 switches withTwinax interconnects.The seamless integration of NetAppwith VMware helped Carestream Dentalmaximize the benefits of its servervirtualization initiative, which greatlyreduced the number of physical serversneeded as well as reduced powerconsumption for servers and cooling.Carestream Dental’s infrastructure isnow almost entirely virtualized acrossthe company’s data centers in Atlanta,Georgia; Richardson, Texas; Cockeysville,Maryland; and Stevenage, UK, includingMicrosoft ® Active Directory ® , Exchange,and SQL Server ® ; internal CRM applications;Web servers; and the Citrixservers used to host services for clients.The company also runs VMwarevCenter Lab Manager on a newNetApp FAS2040 storage system,which provides its development teamwith an additional 24TB of dedicatedSATA storage.To efficiently safeguard its environment,Carestream Dental uses NetAppSnapManager ® for Microsoft Exchangeand SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructuresoftware. The ability to instantaneouslyback up and recover theseenvironments, and do so within a muchsmaller storage footprint than its legacystorage systems allowed, makes itpossible for Carestream Dental to retainits short-term backups online for amuch longer period of time. In the eventof data corruption or a system outage,a highly granular restore point enablesrapid recoverability. The company plansto implement NetApp storage systemsin all four data centers and enable siteto-sitereplication, which will allow it tomove away from off-site tape backups.Business BenefitsReduce costs, improve storageefficiency, and streamline productdevelopmentWith its virtualized environment inplace, Carestream Dental has cut itsdata center floor space consumptionin half, with corresponding savings inpower and cooling. Thanks to uniqueanalytical capabilities delivered viaNetApp AutoSupport , the team wasable to see that the application ofNetApp deduplication, thin provisioning,and Snapshot ® technologies deliveredan effective storage capacity ofmore than twice the raw disk capacityand more than 100% utilization, greatlylowering overall storage requirementsand costs. The decision to install multitieredNetApp disks allows CarestreamDental to run different applications withdifferent requirements on different

“Our NetApp systems provide a singlestorage platform with all the protocolsand features we need, includingiSCSI, NFS, CIFS, deduplication, andreplication, all with a small footprintand simplified management.”Rob SmithInfrastructure Supervisor, Carestream Dental LLCsimpler, and fewer people have to beinvolved in the process. We have alot of ongoing projects as well as newprojects waiting in the wings, and anyway we can increase our efficiency andspeed allows us to dedicate more timeto those projects,” says Smith.Moving forward, Carestream is wellpositioned to respond to new businessneeds, IT priorities, and initiatives. SaysSmith, “Before NetApp and VMware,our reliance on physical servers meanta lot of cost and reengineering when weneeded to support more customers onour hosted applications or grow in general.Now, we can run smaller virtualmachines, add more virtual servers asneeded, and expand our capacity muchmore easily at a much lower cost. Thatscalability, along with the recoverabilityand reliability of our new infrastructure,makes me confident that we’ll be ableto grow as needed.”SOLUTION COMPONENTSNetApp ProductsNetApp V3140 storage controllerNetApp FAS2040 storage systemNetApp DS4243 disk shelf with2TB SATA disksNetApp SnapManager forMicrosoft ExchangeNetApp SnapManager forVirtual InfrastructureNetApp deduplication andthin provisioning technologiesNetApp Snapshot softwareNetApp AutoSupportProtocolsCIFSNFSiSCSIEnvironmentVMware ESX vSphere 4.1VMware ViewVMware vCenter Lab ManagerCisco Nexus 5020 with TwinaxinterconnectsMicrosoft SQL Server 2008Microsoft Exchange Server 2007Microsoft Office CommunicationsServer 2007PartnerPresidio Networked Solutions, Inc.www.presidio.comwww.netapp.comNetApp creates innovative storage anddata management solutions that deliveroutstanding cost efficiency and acceleratebusiness breakthroughs. Discover ourpassion for helping companies around theworld go further, faster at www.netapp.com.Go further, faster ®© 2011 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this documentmay be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc.Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, theNetApp logo, Go further, faster, AutoSupport, SnapManager, andSnapshot are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc.in the United States and/or other countries. VMware is a registeredtrademark and vCenter and vSphere are trademarks of VMware, Inc.Microsoft, Active Directory, and SQL Server are registered trademarksof Microsoft Corporation. All other brands or products are trademarksor registered trademarks of their respective holders and should betreated as such. CSS-6422-0411