St Helens & Knowsley NHS Trust is implementing a new backup system to streamline its storage strategy, as part of a three-year programme to modernise the two hospitals.

Storage supplier B2net installed and configured the technology at St Helens to simplify the trust’s data storage environment, enhance disaster recovery and ensure that the system could accomodate any future storage compliance regulation.

The trust had been storing old, unused data on expensive fibre channel disks, adding new disks when space ran out. But it needed to store existing critical data, by freeing up storage area network capacity.

The new system allows the trust to restore data more easily if it fails, said Phil Corrin, assistant IT director at St Helens and Knowsley NHS.

“As a result of the new system, we can now produce a smaller window for backing up our live data, and in the event of a catastrophic failure, we can restore easily within a much faster timeframe," he said.