Minnesota’s North Memorial Health Care Achieves Perfect Health Using Infoblox Appliances for DNS and DHCP
Infoblox, the market leading developer of advanced network infrastructure automation and control solutions, today announced that Minnesota’s North Memorial Health Care, with more than 700 health care providers in its system, is using Infoblox appliances to manage their internal and external domain name system (DNS) and IP address assignment (DHCP) services.
The network infrastructure at a hospital is as important for patient diagnosis, treatment and recovery as the ability and expertise of the medical staff. When a hospital suffers poor IT performance, downtime or network failure, the consequences can be extreme. Such is the case of North Memorial Health Care.
“We were under tremendous stress to get something in place that has 100-percent uptime and reliability,” said Steve Lazer, Manager of Technology Services at North Memorial Health Care. “Our DNS always has to work. We have patients on the surgical table and medical staff is trying to make decisions about the welfare of a patient. Our staff is truly dependant on DNS and it is intrusive to workflows if DNS fails.”
Nearly four years ago, North Memorial Health Care decided to migrate off aged, legacy systems to an appliance-based solution. However, the appliances they first selected, which were used to manage internal and external DNS as well as DHCP, didn’t meet North Memorial’s high standard for reliability. Within weeks of installation, the staff experienced spotty performance with their DNS. North Memorial brought in a consultant who recommended Infoblox. The IT staff at North Memorial was familiar with Infoblox, their stellar reputation and track record of success.
Within three days, the previous solution had been removed and replaced by nine Infoblox appliances: six Infoblox-550’s, two Infoblox-1550’s and one Infoblox-1050 with the Infoblox network services suite and unique Infoblox Grid™ technology, which links together all the appliances into a unified system for simplified management and resiliency. Infoblox solutions immediately addressed North Memorial’s needs.
The appliances also addressed other network problems, including eliminating manual tasks and automating the management of the devices and associated data.
“Our current DNS story is not a glamorous one to tell,” concluded Lazer. “But, the beauty of it is that the Infoblox appliances work as they are supposed to. Our patients, doctors and administrative staff rely 100 percent on the availability of our DNS. Doctors review medical records and make life and death decisions based upon information they receive within the network. Due to the extreme nature and importance we place on availability, security and network uptime, we found in Infoblox a solution that would provide continuous and uninterrupted network connectivity.”