Halifax Health is a health organization based in Daytona Beach, FL. With over 90 years in business, it’s safe to say Halifax is a health staple in the area. But outside of the usual palm trees and sunshine, the occasional natural disaster hits the great state of Florida – annually, it seems. For that reason, Halifax has had a serious focus on keeping their data safe and accessible. In addition, Halifax is the only Level II Trauma Center in the area, so the need to be adequately quipped is imperative.

Halifax was experiencing challenges backing up and recovering their data in a timeframe that met their RTO/RPO requirements. According to Tom Stafford, VP and CIO of Halifax Health, their current growth rate is about 15-20% year to year, and it’s increasing, due to the massive amount of growth in healthcare right now. Healthcare imaging, and data analytics were putting more strain on their IT infrastructure. With a need to meet RTOs of 0 hours and RPOs of 8 hours, it was important for them to cut the 24 hours nightly it was taking to back up their VMs. Now Dell EMC protects 500 terabytes of data and numerous clinical and enterprise applications and databases, including MEDITECH, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

Stafford and team chose to implement a Dell EMC Data Protection solution that would offset the excess time it was taking to back up their mission critical applications. They found that Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, combined with Dell EMC Data Protection Suite, was the perfect solution to immediately start making leaps and bounds in improving backup time. RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines re-hydrates data and recovers VMs simultaneously. “We recover our infrastructure in a couple hours instead of 24 hours,” said Stafford. Now that RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines (RP4VMs) and Dell EMC Data Protection Software help streamline replication and recovery, IT leadership can assign other tasks that are centered around innovation and driving the business forward – not merely keeping the lights on. Today they are replicating 1,500 VMs to a DR site with ease. And due to the ease of use of RP4VMs, Stafford’s platform engineers were able to perform their backups and the recoveries through vSphere, which freed up his storage engineering resources.

One big consideration in Florida is hurricanes and the potential impact one could have on critical data. “Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Irma hit our region 11 months apart,” Stafford reflects. “Knowing we can recover our electronic medical records if one of our data centers goes out helps me sleep better.”

So, let’s get this straight: Not only was Halifax health able to significantly reduce backup/restore times, but they also freed up additional resources, sleep well at night knowing all their data is protected, and reduce costs they can invest in other groundbreaking initiatives. They were able to do all of this by partnering with the industry leading vendor in the Data Protection market – Dell EMC.

High winds, storm surges, and heavy rains, – what could possibly go wrong in your data center? Hurricanes are one of the most dangerous natural disasters you must prepare for. RP4VMs can enable you to replicate between remote locations – and to the cloud. In areas such as Florida, frequently in storms the entire region is impacted, so having the capability of offloading to the cloud can give you the confidence that even with 100mph winds, your data is still secure.

Halifax is not a one-off success story. RP4VMs provides many organizations with a variety of options for replication today, and on to tomorrow as customer business demands shift. This replication technology provides flexibility and choice for hands-on administrators all the way to the CTO of the business. With data being the most valuable resource in the world, what are you and your business doing to ensure it’s protected? Continuous Data Protection is something that a lot of vendors claim, but few can execute on it to the extent of protecting your data no matter where it’s housed. Even in 100 mph hurricanes, you can protect your data with Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines.

Interested in learning more about Halifax Health? Read on below!