Baylor College of Medicine Deploys SpringSource Hyperic to Manage Uptime for Systems Key to Brain Research

SpringSource, a division of VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), and the leader in Java application infrastructure and management, today announced that the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory within Baylor College of Medicine, a top-ranked medical school based in Houston, has deployed SpringSource Hyperic. The IT staff at the lab, which is within the Department of Neuroscience, can now manage uptime for 35 servers, storage systems and other devices involved with applications related to brain research.

Hyperic is a key part of SpringSource’s modern application infrastructure platform, which provides solutions for building, deploying and managing applications, and is ideally suited for today’s virtual and cloud-based environments. Hyperic saves significant time for the single IT person at Baylor by ensuring that systems fundamental to ongoing brain research are kept online and sending alerts quickly if a problem occurs.

The Hyperic-monitored systems within the lab consist of 30 servers, with 25-30 of them being VMware-based virtual machines. They collect information from five MRI machines, copying the data to a storage-area-network as necessary.

"I am the only IT person running this operation, and that is not a problem thanks to SpringSource Hyperic,” said Justin King, network administrator with the lab at Baylor College of Medicine. "The product provides me a snapshot view of what is going on across my systems, and I can delve in if there is an issue and see what the problem is without having to spend a lot of time figuring things out.”

A disastrous scenario avoided by Hyperic involves capacity. The MRI machines generate a significant amount of data, and from time to time the servers storing the images will come close to running out of room. Hyperic alerts King to this eventuality, and he is therefore able to react and rectify the problem before data is lost.

Among the many business benefits King and the Baylor College of Medicine receive from Hyperic:

• High availability, fast response time and rapid time to resolution—Baylor’s IT response time is now minutes, rather than hours or days, as King is notified of problems the moment they happen. Hyperic’s rapid monitoring information allows King to quickly identify a problem fix. Since issues are identified and remedied quickly, King benefits from limited system downtime.
• Reduced staff resource costs—The monitoring capabilities provided by Hyperic, and the fact the solution helps to quickly fix concerns, has enabled King to remain the only IT person within the organization.
• System monitoring for next-generation data center technologies—The neuroimaging lab has deployed virtual machines and many of its most critical systems rely on those resources. Hyperic seamlessly monitors virtual servers in the same way as physical servers. Keeping the entire system online allows scientific brain research to continue uninterrupted.

"It is not surprising that Hyperic is part of the infrastructure driving some of the most innovative and impactful scientific projects underway today,” said Javier Soltero, chief technology officer of management products for the SpringSource division of VMware. "The needs of the most advanced research facilities at Baylor College of Medicine are similar to other IT environments worldwide. Uptime is critical, rapid alerting of performance concerns as well as information on how to fix them are vital. Hyperic delivers on these needs.”

About SpringSource

SpringSource, a division of VMware, Inc., (NYSE:VMW) and the leader in Java application infrastructure and management, provides a complete suite of software products that accelerate the entire build, run, manage enterprise Java application lifecycle. SpringSource employs the open source leaders who created and drive innovation for Spring, the de facto standard programming model for enterprise Java applications. SpringSource also employs thought leaders within GemStone and the open source communities of Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server, Hyperic, Groovy and Grails, and RabbitMQ. Nearly half of the Global 2000, including many of the world’s leading retail, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology and public sector clients are SpringSource customers. For more information visit: www.springsource.com.

SpringSource and VMware are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.