Scalability on your server
Rotech was already a committed Apple customer, with a Mac on each desktop, when it investigated Mac OS X Server. “We’ve always had Mac systems in our office, so our IT group was excited to add the power and efficiency of our desktops to our back-end IT system,” says Bronson Tubb, director of IS projects for Rotech.
The UNIX roots of Mac OS X Server appealed to Rotech, which develops much of its own software. “We’re an innovative IT group who enjoys software development, and we use our existing UNIX servers to build our own web applications and services. But Apple simplifies our job. We have the UNIX underpinnings combined with the intuitive Mac OS X Server interface,” explains Tubb. “It’s the best of both worlds.”
“With Mac OS X Server and Xserve, our current cluster can expand from 5 to 50 nodes, and more when we need it,” says Prast. “We can deploy the software we develop, and we can deploy Oracle RAC. It’s hard to find more flexibility than that.”
In addition to its UNIX roots and scalability, Mac OS X Server provides easy-to-use management tools. Rotech uses Apple Remote Desktop in Mac OS X Server to facilitate IT management tasks. With Apple Remote Desktop, Rotech can distribute software, manage IT assets, and support users remotely — all essential functions for successful server management.”
Solid as a RAC
After exploring other storage solutions, Rotech settled on the cost-effective Xserve RAID. Not only could it protect the massive amount of data Rotech uses to manage patient services, but Xserve RAID is also certified for use in Linux, Windows, and multiplatform environments. “We sill need and use many of our legacy applications,” says Prast. “Xserve RAID gives us capacity without requiring expensive reconfigurations.”
Xserve Raid combines leading-edge storage technologies for capacity and data protection in a 3U rack-optimized enclosure. Fast throughput and flexible configuration options provide the high-availability, high-performance storage that Rotech needs to store its database on Xserve RAID. With up to 7TB of capacity, Xserve RAID is easy to configure and powerful enough to scale with Rotech’s growing storage requirements.
“Our IT staff can manage our SAN easily using Xserve RAID,” says Tubb. “Combining Xserve RAID with Oracle RAC gives us a level of flexibility and scalability we’ve never had before and it provides more disk for fewer dollars compared with rival solutions like EMC and IBM.”
Growing the grid and escaping the silo
Rotech’s success lies in its ability to acquire companies, integrate their technology, and consolidate them into an SOA. “When you manage as many abstract databases and servers as we do, you look for collaborative technologies that combine to simplify rather than complicate your IT environment,” says Prast. “The partnership of Apple and Oracle makes it easier to service our customers. It lets me sleep at night.
“Our network is becoming increasingly elastic and it is difficult to quantify its scalability,” continues Prast. “We need to operate like a grid, not like a collection of silos. We don’t necessarily know in which direction we’ll have to scale or by how much — by 5 percent, by 25 percent? Using Apple products to deploy Oracle’s database means we don’t need to predict, because the capacity to scale already exists in our network.”
Rotech anticipates the installation of more Xserve with Mac OS X Server and Xserve RAID storage as business continues to grow. “Ultimately, with Apple, we can respond more quickly and cost-effectively to changing market conditions. Apple provides us innovative tools to innovate on our own. It’s a winning combination,” concludes Prast.
