Dual disaster recovery

Hesson said the company's storage team later this year will install a dual-network remote disaster-recovery SAN based on two modular Cisco 9216i Multilayer Fabric Switches.

The company's current disaster-recovery plan includes the shipping of backup tapes to a facility operated by Wayne, Pa.-based SunGard Data Systems Inc. The plan calls for server rebuilds only in emergencies.

Greg Schulz, an analyst at research firm StorageIO in Stillwater, Minn., said Kindred's SAN consolidation project is an example of a best practice that could work well for almost any large enterprise.

"Generally speaking, it's about taking directors or large port-count switches and using those to replace many smaller ones," he said.