EA3940

Cerner Millennium Scalability when deployed on VMware vSphere and Nehalem

Cerner Millennium is a healthcare information technology computing platform helping health professionals elevate safety, quality and efficiency. Cerner has more than 6,000 clients worldwide and is one of the largest ISVs in the healthcare vertical.
Cerner analyzed performance testing in a VMware environment across various Intel chipsets measuring Cerner Millennium application service level agreement metrics and user scalability. Cerner found an increase with user scalability of +100% while meeting service level agreement metrics with VMware vSphere 4 beta and the Intel Nehalem 5500 Quad core processor. Cerner achieved the following results while testing Millennium in a virtualized Citrix XenApp VM on Intel chipsets:
Clovertown 5300 Quad core = 40 total users across 4 VM with ESX 3.5 U2
Harpertown 5400 Quad core = 40 total users across 4 VMs with ESX 3.5 U2
Nehalem 5500 Quad core = 90 total users across 4 VMs with VMware vSphere 4 beta
VMware vSphere and the latest Intel chipset Nehalem have provided enhancements in virtualization and chipset technology which provide Cerner clients an alternate solution that reduces the physical footprint in the datacenter when running production Cerner Millennium Citrix XenApp servers.
Additional Supporting Info:
Cerner's world class healthcare applications are deployed in the datacenter. Cerner uses advanced technologies that meet the stringent performance criteria for functionality, integration and constant upward compatibility for our clients systems. Cerner has created a Thin-Client computing reference architecture for the Millennium mid-tier which includes Windows terminal services, Citrix XenApp and Cerner Millennium. As VMware has guided server consolidation for many Cerner Millennium mid-tier servers; Cerner Millennium running in a virtualized Citrix XenApp environment presents challenges with user scalability, heavy workload s and meeting service level agreement metrics.

Enterprise Applications

Breakout Session

Cerner Millennium, Scalability, VMware vSphere, Intel Nehalem, healthcare, scalability

1 Hour

Paul Ashley, System Engineer, Cerner Corporation
Tony Anastasio, Technology Architect, Cerner Corporation