INTRODUCTION The National Health Service Business Services Authority’s (NHSBSA’s) Prescription Pricing Division occupies an important position in the National Health Service (NHS). Its work is fundamental to the payment and budget management of the significant number of professionals involved in front-line patient care. Its prescription information services provide the basic building blocks to enable improved patient care, and for performance management in the primary care sector. BUSINESS CHALLENGE The division has an ever-evolving business which needs to move with the requirements of the public, who ultimately fund it. Part of this evolution includes a move towards more ‘self-service’ Web-based traffic, starting with health professionals and moving towards public availability. That being the case, the requirement for 24x7x365 operations is becoming increasingly apparent. The NHSBSA Prescription Pricing Division operates several platforms, carrying out separate tasks. In mid-2004, Thesaurus and IBM delivered and assisted in implementing a new back-up and recovery vehicle for the mainframe environment. This was based on the IBM 3494 tape library with 3,592 tape drives, which gave a 6000% (1GB to 60GB) increase in cartridge capacity over the previously utilised 3,490 cartridges, and improved the performance of back-ups, thereby reducing the back-up window. NHSBSA identified its open systems as the next area which needed a consolidated back-up architecture. At the time, Netware servers used CA Arcserve for back-up, and the Sun servers used Legato. The Windows environment was backed up on a best-efforts basis, using differing approaches. The back-up procedures had been introduced with the differing platforms and did not provide a consolidated view of the information backed up. At that time the back-ups were managed on a server-by-server basis and with differing media types. In some cases, back-up windows were becoming a concern. With the drive towards 24x7x365 running, the ability to have a minimal (or, as a best case, a non-existent) back-up window was highly desirable. NHSBSA faced two challenges – the first was the choice of the back-up software to carry out the management of the back-ups, and the second was the tape format to store those back-ups on. SOLUTION NHSBSA went through a process of elimination, considering options presented by several software and hardware manufacturers, including HP, Legato, STK and Sun, as well as the IBM solution. Following extensive evaluation they decided Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) with IBM 3592 tape technology presented the best solution to address their requirements. The IBM TSM offered a solution which could scale from the low-end desktop and laptop arena to the high-end server requirements. It met of all the requirements for scalability, centralised back-up management, reduced back-up windows, reduced tape usage, ease of use and the ability to cope with Netware. TSM also scored highly on its optional extra modules, such as TSM for databases (for integration with Oracle), TSM for mail (for future integration with MS Exchange), TSM for SAN (for LAN-free back-up requirements) and Bare Machine Recovery solutions. NHSBSA, Thesaurus and IBM have collaborated on several successful projects over the past few years, and we have supplied NHSBSA’s zSeries processor. We also worked together on the early stages of the enterprise disk replacement, and the delivery of the mainframe back-up tape replacement. As a result, and with our specialist knowledge in the area of open systems tape and TSM, we were the logical choice to work with NHSBSA on the open systems back-up project. Working with IBM, offered a solution which included the services required to roll out TSM to several initial servers, and to configure the environment in such a way that it would scale efficiently going forward. NHSBSA’s Prescription Pricing Division decided on IBM 3592 tape technology throughout this open systems environment for three major reasons. The first is that 3592 tape could reside in the IBM 3494 library already being used for mainframe back-up, as well as being able to reside in a separate, IBM 3584 tape library on a second site. The second was because of the high levels of availability, redundancy, and quality of the 3592 drives compared with LTO. The third reason was to ensure a single media type throughout the enterprise. The project was delivered on time and addressed all the key requirements cost-effectively, with the support of our services to roll out the solution across the enterprise. RESULT Overall, the impact of TSM on the back-up infrastructure has been excellent and it delivered the following benefits. Back-ups of some of the larger servers have reduced from hours to minutes. Unix and Windows environments have seen a big improvement in back-up windows. Netware servers now have a more structured back-up, and back-up times are Management of back-up process is more simplified and it takes significantly less time for a greater number of servers. Minor changes have been identified since implementation and NHSBSA has been able to take advantage of these and incorporate them into the solution. As an example, Unix now has a centralised back-up policy, with the ability to back up directly to tape (LANfree) for larger databases. NHSBSA is looking to integrate further servers into the TSM environment, and it is also considering additional functions such as TSM for mail (for the new MS Exchange environment); TSM HSM for Windows and TSM for space management, to reduce the volume of data kept in primary storage pools; and TSM for databases, which is dependent on a forthcoming implementation of Oracle RMAN. Throughout the entire process, from initial high-level discussions, through to architecture design, delivery and implementation, we were heavily involved in the process, and we were available to offer NHSBSA expert advice and guidance where required. RECOMMENDATIONS “Thesaurus has worked very closely with NHSBSA and IBM to ensure that every step of the way NHSBSA has been in the best possible position to make informed decisions about the chosen back-up architecture. From initial discussions, through detailed design, proposal, delivery and implementation, Thesaurus has proven to be very capable, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the TSM environment which they delivered “The back-up and recovery solution we now have in place puts us in a much better position in terms of back-up windows, management of back-ups, media usage and overall general usability. We now know that all servers are being backed up, and we are informed if, for whatever reason, a back-up has failed, and we can readily resolve the problem. “Thesaurus is always available to us for any questions or concerns we have, and it continues to offer us valuable support as we move forward with this solution.”