Cisco Cisco Nexus 2224TP GE Fabric Extender Merkblatt
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— Jason Murray
Senior Server Administrator,
Salem Health
“We didn’t want to just move our existing systems over to a new facility,” says Jason
Murray, senior server administrator at Salem Health. “We wanted a new level of
manageability and affordability.” Salem Health sought lower latency, so that clinical staff
could log in to the application and be more productive. It wanted to eliminate interruptions
in service due to upgrades or hardware outages, and improve backup reliability. The
healthcare provider also wanted to be able to make changes quickly in response to
business needs, for example, by adding a disk to the SAN when the organization
needed more storage or by testing and releasing fixes and upgrades to deliver better
performance. With its previous positive experience of Cisco infrastructure, Salem Health
looked to Cisco to help take it to the next stage.
Murray, senior server administrator at Salem Health. “We wanted a new level of
manageability and affordability.” Salem Health sought lower latency, so that clinical staff
could log in to the application and be more productive. It wanted to eliminate interruptions
in service due to upgrades or hardware outages, and improve backup reliability. The
healthcare provider also wanted to be able to make changes quickly in response to
business needs, for example, by adding a disk to the SAN when the organization
needed more storage or by testing and releasing fixes and upgrades to deliver better
performance. With its previous positive experience of Cisco infrastructure, Salem Health
looked to Cisco to help take it to the next stage.
“We saw that a Cisco UCS infrastructure could help us take back management of this
critical application and deliver the performance that we needed in order to improve our
users’ experience and gain more flexibility and agility for the business,” says Murray.
critical application and deliver the performance that we needed in order to improve our
users’ experience and gain more flexibility and agility for the business,” says Murray.
Network Solution
Salem Health’s new colocation provider houses the organization’s Cisco Unified
Computing System™ (UCS®) infrastructure, running EPIC on 22 Cisco B200 M2 Blade
Servers in three Cisco UCS 5108 Server Chassis. 18 Cisco blades are primary servers
for EPIC, and 4 servers are for virtualization. The new data center features two Cisco
Nexus® 5548UP Switches. Because these switches support traditional Ethernet, Fibre
Channel, and FCoE, they connect both the fabric components as well as core switching
at the new data center, saving on equipment and helping Salem Health continue its
transition to a more reliable networking infrastructure.
Computing System™ (UCS®) infrastructure, running EPIC on 22 Cisco B200 M2 Blade
Servers in three Cisco UCS 5108 Server Chassis. 18 Cisco blades are primary servers
for EPIC, and 4 servers are for virtualization. The new data center features two Cisco
Nexus® 5548UP Switches. Because these switches support traditional Ethernet, Fibre
Channel, and FCoE, they connect both the fabric components as well as core switching
at the new data center, saving on equipment and helping Salem Health continue its
transition to a more reliable networking infrastructure.
In its main on-site data center, the hospital runs an additional nine Cisco B200 M2
Blade Servers in three chassis. One pair of Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches supports Fibre
Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). They connect over 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the hospital’s
newer servers, which host multiple healthcare applications and Microsoft Exchange
.The Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches send storage traffic to a Cisco MDS 9500 Multilayer
Director and data traffic to the Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch at the core. Another pair of
Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches connects to Gigabit Ethernet servers, by way of Cisco
Nexus 2000 Fabric Extenders.
Blade Servers in three chassis. One pair of Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches supports Fibre
Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). They connect over 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the hospital’s
newer servers, which host multiple healthcare applications and Microsoft Exchange
.The Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches send storage traffic to a Cisco MDS 9500 Multilayer
Director and data traffic to the Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch at the core. Another pair of
Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches connects to Gigabit Ethernet servers, by way of Cisco
Nexus 2000 Fabric Extenders.
Business Results
When Salem Health switched colocation providers and migrated to Cisco Data Center
solutions, it decreased its annual IT operating costs by $900,000. Because of the
easy manageability of the UCS architecture, the organization was able to take over full
management of the EPIC application with its existing staff and saving the expense of
paying third-party staff.
solutions, it decreased its annual IT operating costs by $900,000. Because of the
easy manageability of the UCS architecture, the organization was able to take over full
management of the EPIC application with its existing staff and saving the expense of
paying third-party staff.
Additional cost savings came from consolidating the data center from 62 physical servers
to 22 on the UCS blade chassis, creating significant power savings. In turn, Salem Health
reduced hardware, licensing, and support costs.
to 22 on the UCS blade chassis, creating significant power savings. In turn, Salem Health
reduced hardware, licensing, and support costs.
Enhanced performance
Clinicians were frustrated by login times of 60-150 seconds: with 1600 Epic users, Salem
Health was spending 24 hours of staff time each day waiting for EPIC to launch. Using
Cisco UCS, the hospital has slashed that to 10-15 seconds, down to well under three
hours per day across the organization.
Health was spending 24 hours of staff time each day waiting for EPIC to launch. Using
Cisco UCS, the hospital has slashed that to 10-15 seconds, down to well under three
hours per day across the organization.