Main Line Health, a non-profit health system serving the Philadelphia metro, has contracted ePlus Technology to implement network infrastructure to support a new disaster recovery and business continuity data center.

The five-hospital system has contracted ePlus in the past to work on IT systems for its primary data center. Work on the secondary data center will include network design, installation and integration.

The client also liked ePlus' channel-partner relationships with Cisco, HP, VMware and Emerson Network Power. The solution ePlus is providing includes Cisco Nexus switches, HP racks, enclosures and blade servers, VMware vSphere hypervisor licenses and Emerson rack and power gear.

The company is also providing professional services at the new data center location.

Karen Thomas, senior VP and CIO at Main Line, said working with ePlus helped the healthcare organization deliver a high-level patient experience. “Main Line takes pride in our IT investments that allow us to provide high quality care and safety—as evident by our recent recognition in Hospital and Health Network's Most Wired for 2012 and Health Imaging & IT's Top 25 Connected Healthcare Facilities,” she said.

“With our primary and secondary data centers, we have a solid infrastructure in place to ensure the availability of our patient critical systems. In addition, the secondary data center infrastructure is instrumental in helping us support future Main Line Health facilities, including Lankenau Medical Center's new building and Exton Center Mall.”

Mark Marron, president of ePlus, said the primary and secondary data centers would give Main Line the benefits of full redundancy and fail-over for critical patient systems, as well as better flexibility and scalability.