United Physicians Case Study

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 X6-2 patching and guidance in a go-live strategy. 

Viscosity reviewed AWR reports and I/O workloads to determine their IOPs, throughput, and latency metrics, in order to create their future hardware roadmap. Based on United Physicians’ I/O requirements, Viscosity was able to assure them 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. Viscosity spent time providing resources that could act as a trusted advisor, and walked through United Physicians’ roadmap and its correlation to Oracle. UP then became open to discussing the purchase of an ODA X7-2

Viscosity worked with UP through the process of having them purchase an ODA with SSD and HDD; this would give 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. 

United Physicians 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, since 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. 

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 with Dev and Test environment as the ODA X7-2 would be for production. Viscosity will continue to be United Physicians’ trusted advisor, as they provide end-to-end monitoring with Oracle Cloud Control 13c.