The UC Davis Medical Center needed to optimize its existing fiber network to meet growing storage needs and improve management of storage protocols, platforms, and applications. It deployed Ciena's CN 2000 Storage and LAN Extension Platform to leverage its fiber infrastructure, gain additional capacity, and provide visibility and security across multiple protocols. This solution provided over 60% capital cost savings while allowing the center to reliably transmit data between data centers with real-time performance monitoring.

1. UC DAVIS MEDICAL CENTER
High-Performance Solution for Cost-Effectively Extending
Multiple Applications
What Our Customers
Are Saying
Due to rapid data growth and internal disaster
recovery initiatives, the University of California
“We selected Ciena’s CN 2000
because of its ability to leverage Davis (UC Davis) Medical Center’s storage
our existing infrastructure and meet
the strict performance requirements requirements and business needs had begun to
in storing and replicating our data
between our two sites. Ciena’s strong exceed the capacity of its existing infrastructure,
technical expertise and experience
in both the storage and optical contained within a single data center.
networking environments ensured
a quick and easy deployment.”
The UC Davis Medical Center, a fully accredited facility with over 600 beds, supports
Alejandro Lopez the clinical and research missions of the UC Davis School of Medicine. Located
UC Davis Medical Center on 140 acres in central Sacramento, UC Davis Medical Center is the region’s only
Level 1 comprehensive adult and pediatric trauma center.
To address its storage requirements and business needs, the Medical Center recently
built a second data center connected via a dark fiber infrastructure that was limited
to only a few pairs of fiber for the networking of storage applications between the
data centers.
The network needed to support the diverse set of protocols—Gigabit Ethernet (GbE),
Fibre Channel (FC) and ESCON®—used by the Medical Center’s storage applications:
disk mirroring on the Mainframe and open systems, including IBM Peer to Peer
Remote Copying (PPRC) on both Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) and Fibre Array
Storage Technology (FAStT); and Network Attached Storage (NAS) extension, tape
backup (IBM 3590), and SAN extension (Brocade Inter-Switch Links (ISLs).
The Medical Center also required a storage extension solution that provided visibility
of their network health and a clear separation between all the different storage
networks/applications (i.e., SAN, NAS, Mainframe, and open systems disk mirroring),
and the Wide Area Network (WAN). The Medical Center also improved real-time
performance monitoring to detect and isolate errors rapidly for immediate response
and optimal efficiency.
C Case Study

2. Challenges Summary
> Increase network capacity for continued growth and return on investment Challenges
> Gain operational efficiencies by consolidating several storage platforms and applications Optimize existing fiber network
onto one network to meet growing storage needs
> Provide high throughput, low latency, and guaranteed security for its applications and improve the management
and QoS of numerous storage
> Improve performance monitoring capabilities protocols, platforms, and
applications including disk
Solution mirroring (IBM’s PPRC on ESS
via ESCON and FAStT via Fibre
To address these issues, UC Davis Medical Center deployed Ciena’s CN 2000® Storage
Channel), SAN extension between
and LAN Extension Platform. The CN 2000 is a cost-effective, customer premise storage Brocade switches and NAS via GbE.
extension device, enhanced by a feature-rich Network Management System (NMS), the
CN 2000 Manager. With the CN 2000, the Medical Center leveraged its existing fiber Solution
infrastructure and storage investments to create an affordable, reliable, and secure storage Ciena’s CN 2000 Storage and LAN
and business continuity network. By natively carrying mission-critical FC, GbE, and ESCON Extension Platform, designed to
traffic in flexible SONET/SDH payloads and transporting it over their existing fiber network, leverage the Medical Center’s
existing fiber infrastructure to
UC Davis Medical Center gained additional capacity to meet their growing storage needs
gain additional capacity, while
and a cost-effective, high-performance solution that ensured data protection. providing security and visibility
of multiple protocols, applications,
Benefits and platforms.
Increased Return On Investment
Benefits
With the CN 2000, the Medical Center has dramatically increased the operational efficiency > Over 60% capital cost savings
of its existing fiber network and significantly reduced the cost per byte of transporting data.
> Existing fiber infrastructure
It is also reducing operating costs by allocating bandwidth based on application need.
can scale in-service up to 256
Typical Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) or dark fiber systems are limited Gigabit services on a fiber pair
to one protocol per wavelength. Using the CN 2000 allows an enterprise to aggregate a
> Real-time and historical
mixture of up to eight FC, GbE, FICON™, and ESCON protocol services over a single performance monitoring of all
wavelength. No longer does an entire wavelength or dark fiber need to be allocated to detailed service metrics
one protocol to serve a single application needing only a fraction of that bandwidth. The
> Software-tunable ports that
Medical Center has also reduced operational expenses by combining the transport of enable flexible, scalable
many storage technologies (NAS, SAN, Direct Attached Storage (DAS), and Mainframe) storage architecture to support
sustained growth and business
with applications such as disk mirroring and tape backup on the same WAN network,
agility
allowing for up to 90 percent more efficient use of WAN bandwidth, and greater
manageability. Software-tunable ports on the CN 2000 provide investment protection, > Ability to reliably transmit
data between geographically
as storage applications grow and migrate over time. For example, when the Medical dispersed data centers
Center migrates their disk mirroring from ESCON to FC, no additional hardware
investment will be required on the CN 2000, as protocol changes can be completed > Increased network reliability
and availability
through software only.
> Guaranteed security by
Improved Quality of Service (QoS) and Business Continuity Capabilities giving data its own secure
deterministic circuit across
The Medical Center has also gained guaranteed security of its mission-critical data the network
across their redesigned SAN. With the CN 2000, multiple applications can share the
same SONET/SDH circuit, while still getting their own physically isolated channel, giving
each application its own path across the network. Multiple traffic streams do not share
bandwidth, as compared to statistically multiplexed solutions. This allows for high
service density with guaranteed loss-free, low-latency performance. Furthermore, the
Medical Center gained guaranteed performance of its applications across any distance
through Ciena’s flow control technology that extends FC thousands of kilometers, while
maintaining maximum throughput. CN 2000’s powerful NMS, the CN 2000 Manager,
measures and ensures minimal network latency, giving users the flexibility to tune
2

3. application latency to obtain optimum performance. The Medical Center can now About UC Davis Medical
support business continuity applications, such as tape backup and disk mirroring with Center
Perfect QoS—zero data loss, high throughput, low latency, and high security—between
UC Davis Medical Center is one
their data centers and across the existing network.
of five University of California
teaching hospitals. As the primary
Improved Visibility and Control clinical education site for the
The Medical Center also needed to monitor the performance of both its applications and UC Davis School of Medicine,
and the only provider of many
the WAN from one single point. The CN 2000 Manager provides detailed performance
medical services, the Medical
monitoring, and has significantly improved the Medical Center’s fault detection and Center is an integral part of the
isolation capabilities without the impact of adding an extra component in the overall health and well-being of Northern
network design. The Medical Center gained end-to-end control and monitoring of its Californians.
traffic, visibility of key service metrics, such as protocol-specific error statistics, and
The University established the
automated latency monitoring capabilities, and uses the CN 2000 Manager to generate
Medical Center in 1973 to support
daily and monthly Service Level Agreements (SLAs) reports of all key statistics. Tasks, such the clinical and research missions
as service additions, changes, and moves are completed in minutes, and service initiation of the UC Davis School of
has become a true plug-and-play implementation. In contrast to the limited health Medicine. Licensed for 645 beds
monitoring capabilities of dark fiber (and DWDM systems), the CN 2000 enables the and fully accredited, UC Davis
Medical Center to monitor key aspects of Medical Center is the region’s
only Level 1 comprehensive adult
service and network performance including:
Data Center A and pediatric trauma center. More
OS/390
information about the services of
Service performance monitoring:
FAStT ESS UC Davis Medical Center can be
> Protocol-specific errors found at www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu.
> Flow Control NAS
2 ESCON
> Utilization of service (frames or bytes)
FC Switch
3590
> FC WWN addresses
Fibre Channel 2GbE
> FC Port login
Network performance monitoring:
> SONET/SDH PMs
Dark Fiber
> Latency monitoring
> RCs
Summary
UC Davis Medical Center had made substantial
investments in its storage platforms and network
infrastructure, but was quickly exceeding its
current storage capacity. The Medical Center
required a storage extension solution that was
affordable, but could also support its existing Data Center B
and future storage and business continuity
needs. By deploying Ciena’s storage extension Applications:
solution, the Medical Center was able to leverage its > Disk mirroring
existing investments to gain a
high-performance, reliable, and affordable – ESCON for PPRC between IBM ESS
storage extension for long-term growth. – Fibre Channel for FAStT
Ciena may from time to time make changes to the products or specifications
> SAN Extension
contained herein without notice. Copyright © 2011 Ciena® Corporation. All rights
reserved. CS006 8.2011
> NAS Extension for GbE
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