Sharp HealthCare and T2 Tech Group Implement Disaster Recovery Solution

Sharp HealthCare and T2 Tech Group successfully completed the design and implementation of a redundant architecture and disaster recovery site, built at the Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group facility in San Diego, California. Completing the project marked the end of phase one in a large, two-part data center transformation. The second phase covers a migration out of the Sharp Operations Center data center.

Throughout the project, the team placed a top priority on maintaining hospital operations and delivering uninterrupted services to patients and staff. For more than 60 of Sharp's applications, including the organization's Cerner Millennium EHR software, the team created an architectural diagram, mapped out a failover process, built and configured solutions at the failover facility, and developed runbooks and playbooks.

Testing without disruption

The organizations moved through the process of testing failover procedures and functionality for each application without taking down the production site or causing any disruption to normal hospital activity. That is the hardest part of any disaster recovery project. A failover site that has never been tested is not a disaster recovery site, it is an assumption. Proving each application can fail over cleanly, while the live environment keeps running, is what separates a real solution from a plan on paper.

This was streamlined by a combination of Sharp's IT team and the T2 Tech hybrid-agile methodology, which balances upfront planning with an iterative execution approach.

How the methodology shaped the work

Within the management method, the team parsed long-term project plans into two-week iterations, held daily meetings with core team members, and provided accurate stakeholder reporting. Each iteration represented a vertical slice of the entire project.

Using this framework, the team could work all the way through one application thread, then apply the lessons learned when starting on the next. Applying those lessons before the whole project was complete made the team more efficient in both the near term and the long term. On a project spanning 60 applications, that compounding efficiency is not a minor detail, it is the difference between a schedule that holds and one that slips with every added system.

The client's perspective

"With entire communities depending on us for their medical needs, Sharp HealthCare must maximize its use of resources and avoid downtime in its critical software and services," said Teri Moraga, VP of IT Infrastructure at Sharp HealthCare. "When it was time to find a project management partner to help reshape our approach to IT disaster recovery, T2 Tech Group was selected because of their experienced team and unique project management methodology. Helping drive the successful completion of our redundant buildout, their project managers allowed our application team to work more efficiently, and they helped provide crucial knowledge and processes that will streamline our future move to a new primary data center."

What comes next

Sharp's investment in a redundant architecture is the first phase of its data center transformation initiative. The next phase covers a migration out of the old Sharp Operations Center data center. To implement it efficiently, the team will draw on the application environment knowledge and process improvements gained in phase one.

Sharp HealthCare comprises 18,900 employees, 2,900 affiliated physicians, four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, three affiliated medical groups, and a full spectrum of other facilities and services. Guided by T2 Tech's project management, Sharp's work on the redundant buildout and the migration to a new primary data center will improve scalability and reliability. That work helps ensure the health system can serve its patients without interruption, and it supports Sharp's pursuit of the Triple Aim of better care, better health, and lower cost.