Background

United Physicians (UP), is a network of physicians that contracts with health plans, whose members have medical staff privileges at hospitals and healthcare systems. While the company’s network has grown, so has their IT footprint. Initially, UP deployed their databases and applications with all SSDs in a virtualized Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) X6-2. Oracle Platinum Partner, Viscosity North America (Viscosity), was brought in, to provide a solution for their ODA X6 patching and guidance in a go-live strategy.

Solution and Proposal

Viscosity reviewed AWR reports and I/O workloads to determine their IOPs, throughput and latency metrics to determine their future hardware roadmap. Based on their I/O requirements, Viscosity was able to assure UP that the new appliance would not only provide performance, but also have enough capacity for future growth. Viscosity also educated UP to consider information life cycle management with tiered storage on the ODA. After Viscosity spent time providing resources that could act as a trusted advisor, and walk through UP’s roadmap and its correlation to Oracle, UP became open to discussing the purchase of an ODA X7-2.

Viscosity worked with UP through the process to have them purchase an ODA with SSD and HDD, giving them both the performance and capacity required for their production environment. After the ODA X7-2 was initiated, Viscosity experts were onsite
to standup the ODA.

Deep Virtualization

UP deployed four virtual machines for their application stack on the ODA X7-2, allowing them to fully utilize the ODA as their go-to virtual infrastructure. However, this proved to be a more difficult task than initially believed, as the latest patch was not as stable as expected. Viscosity honored their commitment for success and provided services, free of charge, to ensure that UP was patched to a stable update.

Memory Expansion

After production go-live, Viscosity was asked to patch the ODA X6-2, resell memory upgrades to the maximum configuration, and collaborate with UP to effectively utilize their Dev and Test environment as the ODA X7-2 will be for production. Viscosity will continue to be their trusted advisor, as they provide end to end monitoring with Oracle Cloud Control 13c.