Date of Award

Fall 12-1-2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS)

First Advisor

Mark Moran

Second Advisor

Omar El-Gayar

Third Advisor

Stephen Krebsbach

Abstract

In the healthcare field, information is paramount to making correct decisions. Thus, healthcare organizations have historically kept all possible data, and applied it toward diagnosis, and later to research. In past years, the storage of these records meant large warehouses filled with folders of papers. In the early 1990s, healthcare companies began a conversion to electronic medical record keeping. With this conversion the stacks of records took on a new form: millions of files spread over many servers. The proliferation of these files has, over time, become unmanageable due to the large volume and the aging of support infrastructure. As such, it has become necessary to re-architect the file services system. The scope of this project includes the research to determine the likely candidates for such replacement, the selection of a candidate through logical elimination, and the implementation of a pilot of that system to prove its usability, scalability, and manageability in the healthcare enterprise. The project started with a thorough search of all the potential solutions on the market. From this process, several candidate systems emerged. Following the initial product search, evaluations were done on what was felt to be the strongest candidates. Three products fell into this evaluation group: Windows Storage Server 2003, PolyServe, and Network Appliance. Each of these systems were brought into the test environment and subjected to several tests to measure scalability, manageability, and usability within a controlled test scenario. From these evaluations, the Network Appliance solution was chosen as the best fit for the company. Once the final selection was made, the next step was to purchase infrastructure to support a pilot of 80 shares being migrated from their existing servers to the new system. This migration process was completed over a 3 month period, and statistics were gathered to evaluate the results against the previous Windows NT system. At the completion of these migrations, the statistics have shown a significant improvement in availability and reliability using the Network Appliance solution. From this result, the decision to move forward with a full implementation has been made, and will allow the enterprise to support a long-term file services strategy. Additionally, the archival functions of the Network Appliance will ensure that on-line data can be better managed, reducing costs for disk storage. These improvements will allow for a quick return on investment when compared to the current strategy.

Comments

dsu-th-013

Download

Share

COinS