Server Specifications

PHYSICAL SERVERS

• Medikin's servers are powered by quad-core Intel Xeon processors with multiple hot-swappable hard drives in RAID 1 configurations, dual power supplies and up to 32 GB of RAM. Remote control of the servers is maintained via KVM-over-IP switches. This enables systems administrators to remotely access the servers at the BIOS level which is helpful in case of any critical issues with the base operating system.

VIRTUAL SERVERS

• Medikin utilizes the open source Xen Hypervisor virtualization technology to provision services to its clients via virtual servers running the latest stable version of the Debian distribution of the Linux open source operating system. Virtualization enables Medikin to scale up very quickly and without interruption to existing services. Virtualization provides many other benefits such as datacenter flexibility, more efficient use of computing resources and greater application security.

SYSTEMS MONITORING

• Physical and virtual servers as well as critical services are monitored 24X7 by a customized implementation of the open source Nagios monitoring software. Alerts are sent to qualified on-call engineers via email and SMS.

DATABASE SYSTEMS

• The databases reside on servers dedicated exclusively for reading from and writing to the database tables. Multiple database servers handle the active client data, and standby servers are updated nightly to provide fault tolerance at the database processing layer. Medikin utilizes the most advanced open source database software - PostgreSQL and MySQL, and the AFS file system for enhanced security, scalability and efficiency.

DATA STORAGE

• All client audio and document data as well as virtual server image and code repository updates are backed up to a storage system consisting of a large redundant array (RAID 5) of hot-swappable disks which stripe the data across the drives to ensure continuity in case of a disk failure. A secondary incremental backup is transmitted nightly via VPN to a storage server in Medikin's secondary datacenter. Off-site backup to fixed media such as tape or DVD is available upon request.