CA ARCserve in Server Consolidation

CA Technologies (CA, Inc.) announced that its ARCserve solution is playing a central role in a server consolidation
initiative at the All-Japan Federation of National Health Insurance
Organizations (NHIOs) – empowering the organization to gain the economic
benefits of centralized processing, while also supporting localized reporting
in each of the country’s 47 prefectures and safeguarding critical data.

NHIOs is a public
interest corporation comprised of local NHIOs throughout Japan.

These local NHIOs were using their own servers to operate a benefits payment
system for disabled persons. To save money and time, the NHIOs decided to
consolidate processing on a centralized, virtualized infrastructure.

However, because local NHIOs have to work closely with system data – which
includes a primary database and a large number of PDF and CSV files containing
detailed cost breakdowns shared with local government bodies and providers of
welfare services – the federation had to automatically replicate data
from the new centralized processing environment to a local server at each
prefecture. This localized data replication would also provide the federation
with essential backup-and-restore capabilities.

NHIOs therefore needed a means of replicating data to local servers without
adversely impacting IT processes or consuming excessive network bandwidth.

The federation compared several alternative solutions – focusing on real-time
data transfer capability, file transfer speed and system stability. Based on
its evaluation, which included performance testing, it
selected ARCserve Replication.

Key factors that distinguished ARCserve Replication included its stable CPU
and memory utilization, its low network bandwidth utilization, and the fact
that it could transmit more than 10,000 files in less than a minute – even to Okinawa,
the most distant prefecture from the federation’s Tokyo datacenter location. It also offered value from a cost/benefit perspective.

"To keep the process from
application to payment timely, it is essential for local government bodies and
NHIOs to exchange information in something close to real time," said
Keiji Takano, deputy manager, Federation’ s Long-term Care Insurance
Division Persons with Disabilities Payments Section. "CA ARCserve Replication was uniquely able to meet our requirements for
speed, minimized resource utilization and management functionality."

In addition to reducing cost and labor burdens for the Federation and the
prefectures, the ARCserve solution is providing protection against the risk of
data loss in the event of hardware failure, natural disaster or other
eventualities.

This is the federation’s first virtualization project involving a mission-critical
system, and its success is driving interest in other similar initiatives.

"The All-Japan Federation of
National Health Insurance Organization’s consolidation project reflects the
challenges facing many customers as they seek to gain the efficiencies offered
by centralized virtual infrastructure, while also meeting the operational requirements
of regional branch/remote offices," said Kentaro Eguro, VP, data management,
CA. "Their choice of CA
ARCserve Replication highlights the special capabilities of our solution – and
how those capabilities extend beyond data protection to our customers’ other
wide-area replication needs."