Case study: CVS/Caremark, Inc
Bridgeworks SANslide improves remote data
transfer rates up to 50X
In concept, remote data replication assures data protection and
recovery. In practice, it is fraught with difficulties: data transfer errors,
network outages and high costs. Lengthy data transfer times make
these difficulties all the more likely. Organizations that depend upon
remote replication for business continuance demand swift, certain
data transfer. CVS/Caremark, Inc., is one company that refused
to compromise on its data transfer requirements and chose the
Bridgeworks SANslide product to fulfill them.
CVS/Caremark, Inc., is one of America’s leaders in pharmacies and planned benefit
administration with more than 7000 specialty pharmacy locations in 43 states, Puerto
Rico and the District of Columbia. CVS/pharmacy also features MinuteClinic, the leader
in retail-based health clinics. Its primary data centers are in Woonsocket, Rhode Island
and Scottsdale, Arizona. With thousands of patients and customers depending upon
CVS for their medication and health needs, downtime is unacceptable and business
continuity must be assured.
“The implementation was
so successful that we put
it into production almost
immediately. Depending
upon network conditions,
performance was improved
a minimum of 10X and up
to 50X. We achieved almost
immediate ROI. SANslide has
proven to be rock solid and
problem-free.”
To facilitate its business continuance strategy, CVS needed to replicate data from its Scottsdale data center to its Woonsocket
data center on a weekly basis. CVS selected the Tributary Systems, Inc., (TSI) ViTAL virtual tape library system. It placed one
system in each data center and connected them via IP over a shared OC 12 link; data is transferred asynchronously between
the two VTL systems using iSCSI.
Don Lutes, senior technical advisor for CVS/Caremark, is responsible for managing the solution. “The VTL architecture worked
as we expected,” said Lutes. “However, the network traffic on our link caused serious latency that negatively impacted our
data transfer. In some cases, it would take up to 15 hours to transfer 50 GB of data. This was unacceptable and we needed a
way to reduce the transfer time to less than four hours for our full backup, which exceeds 500GB.”
Lutes considered several solutions to the problem. One option was FCIP, but it would still require transfer over a clogged IP
network. WAN accelerator products were also considered, but the high cost of these solutions caused Lutes to keep looking.
He asked TSI for their recommendation and TSI suggested the Bridgeworks SANslide product. SANslide is an in-band 1U
appliance engineered to eliminate the effects of latency and packet loss using sophisticated AI algorithms.
“We decided to do a pilot project with the SANslide product, because the implementation really had very little risk,” said Lutes.
The whole implementation took less than a day. It didn’t require any additional cabling and mostly entailed the setting of two
IP addresses per site.
“The implementation was so successful that we put it into production almost immediately,” explained Lutes. “Depending
upon network conditions, performance was improved a minimum of 10X and up to 50X. We achieved almost immediate ROI.
SANslide has proven to be rock solid and problem-free.”
Bridgeworks
135 Somerford Road Christchurch Dorset BH23 3PY
Tel +44 (0)1202 588588
Fax +44 (0)1202 588589
Web www.4bridgeworks.com
Company Registered in England No 2155954
Registered Office: Nat West Bank Chambers
55 Station Road New Milton Hampshire BH25 6JA
Case study: CVS/Caremark, Inc
Summary
Customer CVS/Caremark, Inc.
Scenario CVS/Caremark transferred backup data between data centers for data protection and disaster recovery
Problem Data protection strategy jeopardized by long, unreliable data transfer times
Requirement Reduce 15 hour process to less than four hours
Alternatives FCIP, WAN accelerators, Bridgeworks SANslide
Technical Solution Benefits
Improved data transfer times as much as 50X
Installed in a few hours with no additional cabling
Seamless implementation
Lights-out operation
Business Benefits
Data protection certainty
Up to 50X faster data recovery
Costs a fraction of typical WAN accelerators
Rapid ROI
Bridgeworks
135 Somerford Road Christchurch Dorset BH23 3PY
Tel +44 (0)1202 588588
Fax +44 (0)1202 588589
Web www.4bridgeworks.com
Company Registered in England No 2155954
Registered Office: Nat West Bank Chambers
55 Station Road New Milton Hampshire BH25 6JA
Case study: CVS/Caremark, Inc
About CVS/Caremark, Inc.,
CVS Caremark is the largest pharmacy health care provider in the United States. Through our
integrated offerings across the entire spectrum of pharmacy care, we are uniquely positioned to provide
greater access, to engage plan members in behaviors that improve their health, and to lower overall
health care costs for health plans, plan sponsors, and their members. As one of the country’s largest
pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), we provide plan sponsors and participants access to a network of
approximately 65,000 pharmacies including more than 7,266 CVS/pharmacy stores.
We employ approximately 200,000 colleagues in 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
As of June 30, 2011, we operated 7,266 retail stores, 66 retail specialty pharmacy stores, 18 specialty
mail order pharmacies, four mail order pharmacies, and our CVS.com and Caremark.com Web sites. In
addition, our MinuteClinic division runs approximately 500 retail-based medical centers in 26 states.
About Bridgeworks
Bridgeworks has nearly thirty years’ experience of providing innovative connectivity solutions to both
OEMs and end users in the storage market.
Bridgeworks’ solutions help thousands of end users to maximise the return on their investments in
storage, infrastructures and storage devices. They offer the highest levels of performance, reliability,
flexibility and unmatched value.
Global partners in
Austria
From their UK base, Bridgeworks has helped businesses worldwide to adopt the latest connectivity
standards by making their existing storage systems compatible with evolving technologies such as Fibre
Channel - SCSI, -SAS - iSCSI without disruption and with minimal investment.
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For further information please contact Bridgeworks
+44 (0)1202 588 588
www.4bridgeworks.com
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United Kingdom
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Bridgeworks
135 Somerford Road Christchurch Dorset BH23 3PY
Tel +44 (0)1202 588588
Fax +44 (0)1202 588589
Web www.4bridgeworks.com
Company Registered in England No 2155954
Registered Office: Nat West Bank Chambers
55 Station Road New Milton Hampshire BH25 6JA