Texana Mental Health and Mental Retardation

SUCCESS STORY
Texana Mental Health and Mental Retardation
ClearCube Eliminates Slow PC Performance In Remote Clinics
Texana Mental Health and Mental
Retardation (MHMR) is a community
Behavioral Health and Developmental
Disability Center located southwest
of Houston, Texas. The center and
its seven associated facilities provide
behavior treatment and training, early
childhood intervention, behavioral health
OVERVIEW
4The Challenge
Deliver fast, secure computing to
eight widely-distributed MHMR
facilities
4The Solution
Connect remote end users to
a centralized ClearCube blade
deployment through small, Ethernetconnected user ports
4The Benefit
Significantly faster performance,
hardened asset security, and no more
services and developmental disability
services for individuals with behavioral and
developmental disabilities.
The Challenge
As a partially government-funded facility,
Texana MHMR is required to supply the
state with a large volume of information
on its patients. The center gathers and
organizes this data through an electronic
medical record (EMR) system that is
accessible to all eight campuses. “Nurses,
psychiatrists and psychologists use the
system to enter data about the patients and
to create and document treatment plans,”
says Dave Mathis, IT Director.
Texana employees accessed the EMR
system on Dell PCs that were supported by
four Citrix servers. “At the time, Citrix was our
only solution for making the medical record
system work over the entire network,” says
Mathis. “Fifteen to twenty users would be
on each box at any given time, which made
the system run terribly slow. Performance
was especially poor when we converted the
medical record system to SQL.”
trips to remote facilities for repairs
The center was also beginning to experience
reliability issues. “Our facilities are older,
so there’s lots of dirt and dust around that
would get into the computers,” says Mathis.
“After about two or three years, they just
started to fall apart. We didn’t have any
hardware issues with the Citrix servers, but
over time the boxes would become corrupt
and quit letting users log in. Then we’d have
to distribute all the users from the corrupt
box to the other boxes in order to perform
repairs. That made things run even slower
than usual, which was very painful for some
of our users.”
While end users battled slow PC
performance, the center’s IT staff struggled
to support facilities distributed across six
counties. Texana’s IT center is stationed
in the main campus in Rosenberg, which
unfortunately isn’t centrally located between
the other eight facilities.
“We had very little ability to remotely control
the machines, which made remote repairs a
real nuisance,” says Mathis. “It would take
our staff anywhere from ten minutes to an
hour and a half to drive to another campus.
Most issues took at least four to five hours
to resolve, and if a site was really remote, it
could blow a whole day.”
The Solution
Once the funds became available for
a technical refresh, Texana began to
seriously review its options. “I considered
leasing PCs from Dell again since that’s
what we’ve always done, but then I read an
article on blades that caught my attention,”
says Mathis. “It talked about how NORAD
and other government agencies are
implementing blades in order to centralize
all their computers in one area, and I
thought this was a great idea.”
The ClearCube solution removes the PC
from the desk, condenses it into an Intel®based blade form-factor, and rack-mounts
it in a central data center or network closet.
End user peripherals (monitor, keyboard,
mouse) connect to the blade through a
small footprint ClearCube user port that
utilizes standard cabling, fiber or Ethernet.
ClearCube management software enables
IT personnel to remotely manage the entire
deployment from anywhere in the world.
While Mathis and his team looked at blade
solutions from both HP and ClearCube,
the center ultimately decided to go with
ClearCube since “HP didn’t really offer a
solution at that time.” Texana replaced all
its PCs and Citrix servers with a deployment
of ClearCube blades that are housed at
its central campus. Each blade supports
three users, and users access their blades
through Ethernet-connected ClearCube
user ports (I/Ports).
The Benefit
“The first thing we noticed after deploying
the blades was a huge increase in speed,”
says Mathis. “That used to be one of the
most frequent helpdesk calls – how slow
the computers were, how it would take
five minutes just to print anything … It was
causing a lot of frustration. ClearCube
probably increased the medical record
system’s performance by 300%. The users
immediately noticed the pick-up in speed,
which was a huge relief for them.”
For remote users, the centralized solution
is also much more convenient. “Many
of our doctors and nurses travel from
8834 Capital of Texas Highway North
site to site, which used to cause a lot of
problems. We’d get helpdesk requests
about users not being able to log in at
such-and-such site, or their profile wasn’t
there, or they couldn’t check email. Now
they can go to any I/Port anywhere and
log in. Their profiles are right there, and
they don’t have to wait on us to help them
out,” says Mathis.
“ClearCube probably increased
system performance by 300%. The
users immediately noticed the pickup in speed, which was a huge relief
for them.”
— Dave Mathis
IT Director
Texana MHMR
If a problem does arise, Texana’s IT staff
can now perform repairs directly from the
console instead of driving out to a remote
facility. Even in the event of a system failure,
the ClearCube management software
enables IT administrators to reallocate
those users to a spare blade in minutes. In
addition to delivering 99.9% uptime levels,
this solution greatly reduces time spent on
repairs and maintenance.
its assets. Only authorized personnel can
access the centrally located blades, and
IT administrators can “lock out” users
from attaching mass storage devices (disk
drives, USB keys) to their user ports. These
security measures prevent unauthorized
users from downloading sensitive patient
data onto removable media or uploading
unwanted software onto the system.
“In the past we’ve had computers stolen
through burglaries,” says Mathis. “Now we
never have to worry about anything like
that. If an I/Port gets stolen, no big deal.
You can’t get any information from it, and
it’s easy to replace.”
With its centralized hardware and powerful
management software, the ClearCube
solution has enabled Texana MHMR to
manage its network of remote facilities
simply and securely. “Right now we’re just
beginning to see the benefits, but already
it’s been a big help for us,” says Mathis.
“We can remotely control the users much
more easily than before. For example, if
I need to install software on someone’s
computer, I can just remote into whatever
blade they’re on and install it right then and
there. For simple problems—which is all
we’ve had to deal with so far—ClearCube
probably cuts our repair time in half,” says
Mathis.
In addition to simplifying deployment
management, the centralized ClearCube
solution enables Texana to better protect
Austin, Texas 78759
Voice 512.652.3500
www.clearcube.com
ClearCube blades rack-mounted in Texana’s
main campus data center.
Fax 512.652.3501
Toll Free 866.652.3500