Guest Spot: Setting Data Repository Transfer Downtime to Avoid Errors

Contributed by: Edward Chisam, President, DR Validate

In these busy days in healthcare, perhaps you’ve been given the privilege of maintaining your Data Repository server, in addition to a multitude of other application roles you perform at your facility. SQL Servers do require regular maintenance, such as keeping up to date with Windows updates, rebuilding of indexes, performing backups, and a variety of other tasks. These necessary activities can cause issues such as SQL Server deadlocks, slowdowns in response time, or require a server reboot - leading to dreaded “skipped sequence” errors in the DR module that will need to be reported to your DR specialist in order for the skipped data to properly transfer. In this article, I’ll discuss how downtime can be gracefully scheduled to halt DR transfers during the planned maintenance period - with the transfers resuming after the maintenance period is over. Hopefully, this procedure can lead to the elimination of unnecessary errors. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.

Downtime Scheduling

Let’s look at how downtime can be scheduled in a Client/Server system (Magic users will follow a very similar procedure) running in Continuous transfer mode. Within the Operations Desktop routine, select the Data Transfers, Schedule, and Edit Downtime Schedule tabs circled below:

These actions will bring up the Downtime scheduling routine, where days involving planned downtime can be selected, along with the corresponding start and end times of each day’s maintenance period. Days can be entered individually, using this syntax for each day: SUN MON TUE WED THUR FRI SAT. Times are entered in a military, 24-hour format, e.g. 0400, 1800, etc. If you plan on performing maintenance at the same time each day, a range of days can be selected within the Days field by using the following syntax: [Start Day]..[End Day]. The example below shows the setting of planned downtime daily for each day of the week, from 12:01 AM to 4:00 AM:

If you need to set downtime that runs across midnight, it will be necessary to enter both days into the schedule. For example, to set downtime from Saturday 10:00 pm to Sunday at 2:00 am, enter the schedule as follows:

When the appointed maintenance period arrives, if all is working correctly, the transfers should automatically halt and display as follows:

Resumption of Transfers

With the transfers gracefully halted, planned maintenance activities can be performed. At the appointed end time of the maintenance period, the DR transfers will automatically resume. Of course, during the downtime, medical information is still being entered into the MEDITECH system, so a buildup of pending activity will continue to occur. In a relatively short amount of time after transfers are resumed, any pending activity should transfer to Data Repository, placing the Transfers into a “sleeping” status while they wait for more edits to be made in the main MEDITECH system. Below is a snapshot of a normal, healthy DR system that has caught up with pending activity after a planned downtime period:

NOTE: In the MEDITECH 6.x systems, in addition to scheduling downtime within these NPR routines, transfers need to be disabled for the MEDITECH Advanced Technology environment. This is done by accessing the Activity routine within the Operations desktop and choosing the Stop Jobs tab. Following the conclusion of downtime, the same routine will present an option to Start Jobs for the disabled MEDITECH Advanced Technology transfers.

Summary

As we’ve seen, MEDITECH presents a simple, yet underutilized, means of gracefully scheduling necessary maintenance activities for your vitally important SQL Server. Regular, ongoing maintenance is the best way to keep your Data Repository system running at peak efficiency, and to confront small problems before they turn into larger ones.

Questions regarding Data Repository and Meaningful Use?

Email them to Edward at echisam@drvalidate.com.

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Edward Chisam is President at DR Validate and was a Senior Development Programmer of the Data Repository application at MEDITECH.