VxRail extends flexibility in Healthcare with new EHR best practices
Mon, 01 Jun 2020 13:39:38 -0000
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The Healthcare industry is pressured to deliver not only as health providers, but making the infrastructure that operates the healthcare system, secure, scalable, and simple to use. This allows healthcare providers to focus on patients. VxRail has had a great deal of success in the healthcare vertical because its core values align so closely with those demanded by the industry. With early successes in VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), healthcare IT departments expanded to more business and even life critical IT use cases with VxRail, because it proved that it can be highly scalable, simple to use, and has security built into everything it does.
“Best Practices for VMware vSAN with Epic on Dell EMC VxRail” created in collaboration with our peers at VMware highlights the considerations around a small to medium size environment, specifically for Epic. It uses a 6 node VxRail configuration to provide predictable and consistent performance, as well as Life Cycle Management (LCM) for the VxRail. The VxRail node used in this best practice is an E560N – an all NVMe solution. Balancing workload and budget requirements, the dual-socket E560N provides a cost-effective, space-efficient 1U platform. Available with up to 32TB of NVMe capacity, the E560N is the first all-NVMe 1U VxRail platform. The all-NVMe capability provides a higher performance at low queue depths making it much easier to reliably deliver very high real-world performance for a SQL Server database management system (DBMS). Being able to run multiple healthcare applications including EHR, while successfully maintaining the secure, scalable, and simplified use of VxRail is possible. Enabling healthcare IT departments to scale and expanded infrastructure to meet the ever-growing demands of the health providers and the healthcare industry.
VxRail has had a great deal of success in the healthcare vertical because its core values align so closely to those demanded by the industry
- Secure - Security is a core part of VxRail design, this starts at the supply chain and the components used to build it, continues into the features and software designed into it, and evolves with every lifecycle management that updates the VxRail HCI (hyperconverged infrastructure) system software. The most recent feature added supports 2-factor authentication (2FA), to provide an additional layer of security. VxRail has FIPS 140-2 validated encryption based on vSAN architecture. There is a detailed whitepaper for the VxRail security that covers in detail security features and certifications here.
- Scalable - What makes VxRail an effective solution for healthcare is its ability to scale, not just for EHR applications, but for any application sharing the solution. With VxRail, you can size based on the known or expected workloads for the initial deployment and provide a solution that meets that workload requirement. This allows for the healthcare infrastructure to buy for the requirements of today, not the estimated requirements of three to five years down the road, as VxRail will scale easily into the future. Scaling the VxRail is easy... need more compute, just add an additional node; need more storage space, just add additional capacity drives.
- Simplicity - Why is simplicity important when it comes to not just healthcare solutions, but all workloads? It is about IT teams being able to focus on their business and less on the continuous effort to maintain environments. VxRail simplifies operations with software-driven automation and lifecycle management. VxRail is continuously tested and updated as a solution from the BIOS, firmware, and HCI to the VMware software
VxRail is flexible enough to support hospital systems, alongside other applications for business and even education. A great example of this this flexibility can be seen in this Mercy Ships case study. The new best practices for Epic EHR combined with the proven successes that VxRail has with VDI in the Healthcare vertical are a testament to VxRail’s versatility.
Additional Resources:
Author: Vic Dery, Senior Principal Engineer, VxRail Technical Marketing
Best Practices for VMware vSAN with Epic on Dell EMC VxRail - Here
Dell EMC VxRail Comprehensive Security Design - Here
See more solutions from Dell for healthcare and life sciences - Here
Customer profile Mercy Ships - Here
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Healthcare Homerun for VxRail – MEDITECH Certified
Thu, 16 Jul 2020 19:14:23 -0000
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At Dell Technologies we are excited and proud to announce the VxRail HCI (Hyperconverged Infrastructure) certification for MEDITECH. Dell Technologies is #1 in the Hyperconverged Systems segment, a position held for 12 consecutive quarters1. VxRail is the only fully integrated, pre-configured, and tested hyperconverged infrastructure that simplifies and extends VMware environments. This solution helps simplify MEDITECH environments using VMware VMs improving performance and scalability by bringing together and optimizing multiple workloads.
With this Dell Technologies certified solution that leverages VxRail, MEDITECH environments are easier to use, have lower risk of failure while continuing to provide a fiscally responsible approach.
Dell EMC and MEDITECH worked closely with an approved integrator* during the certification of the VxRail running the MEDITECH test harness. Testing consisted of a VxRail cluster to support all VMs required for the MEDITECH application, and provide infrastructure redundancy etc. MBF (MEDITECH Backup Facilitator) backups are accomplished with Dell EMC’s Networker-NMMEDI in conjunction with RecoverPoint for VM’s, that has been tested and is backed by best in class implementation and a continuous focus on positive customer experience.
1 IDC WW Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, Vendor Revenue (US$M) Q1 2020, June 18, 2020
Conclusion:
Dell Technologies makes IT transformation real for MEDITECH environments with a data first approach and as a leading provider of Healthcare IT infrastructure we are uniquely positioned to offer a full breath of solutions for MEDITECH environments. In fact, more than 60% of MEDITECH’s customers deploy a Dell Technologies solution2. For these reasons at Dell Technologies we’re excited and proud to add this certification, which supports MEDITECH Expanse, 6.X, Client/Server and MAGIC environments, to our Dell Technologies Healthcare portfolio.
*Special thanks to Teknicor for providing their best practices, assistance and lab space for this certification process.
2 HIMSS Analytics, May 2019.
Resources:
Read Solutions for MEDITECH Environments
Author: Vic Dery, Senior Principal Engineer, VxRail Technical Marketing
Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on Dell EMC VxRail
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 15:25:12 -0000
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A recently created reference architecture, running Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters (BDC) on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) on Dell EMC VxRail, demonstrates a fast and simple way to get started with big data workloads running on Kubernetes. It also shows how the containerized workloads ran using VxRail.
SQL BDC on TKG on VxRail enables simplified servicing for cloud native workloads, and is designed to scale with business needs. Administrators can implement the policies for namespaces and manage access and quota allocation for application-focused management. All of this helps build a developer ready infrastructure with enterprise-grade Kubernetes with advanced governance, reliability, and security.
This reference architecture also validated SQL BDC with Spark SQL TPC-DS benchmark optimized parameters. The test results showed that Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on VxRail provides linear scalability (for complex TPC-DS-like decision support workloads that use different query types) with predictable query response time and high throughput.
In the business value section for using SQL BDC and TKG on VxRail, based on the five measurements below. It's covered in more detail within the reference architecture.
- Simplified installation of Kubernetes
- Automated multi-cluster operations
- Integrated platform services
- Open source alignment
- Production Ready
Cross-functional teams from Dell EMC VxRail, VMware, and Microsoft have reviewed the reference architecture for content and supportability. This can provide comfort for those wanting to run on Tanzu. Some notes from Microsoft Release notes from Cumulative Update 12 (CU12) of BDC):
SQL Server Big Data Clusters is supported as a workload. Microsoft provides support for the software components on the containers installed and configured by SQL Server Big Data Clusters only. Kubernetes itself, and other containers that may influence SQL Server Big Data Clusters behavior, are not supported by the (Microsoft) support team. For Kubernetes support please contact your certified Kubernetes distribution provider.
Note: This reference architecture provides general design and deployment guidelines of running Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters on VMware Tanzu™ Kubernetes Grid™ on Dell EMC VxRail. The reference architecture also applies to any compatible hardware platforms running VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on vSAN™.
To wrap up, VxRail provides SQL BDC on Tanzu as a scalable and secure platform to deliver key business outcomes. This reference architecture highlights one of the first known support solutions built on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to manage Kubernetes. The paper covers the spectrum on the build, testing, and expected performance on VxRail.
Resources:
- Running Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
- SQL Server Big Data Clusters platform release notes - SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Microsoft Docs It's reformulated release notes, now simpler and focused on tested configurations and documenting known issues.
- SQL Server Big Data Clusters CU12 release notes - SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Microsoft Docs For every release starting with CU12, we will provide a dedicated article containing many details about what's new, fixes, and most importantly, an extensive list of what's under the hood.
- SQL Server Big Data Clusters cumulative updates history - SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Microsoft Docs In this article, we will keep track of all previous update details.
Author: Vic Dery – Linkedin