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MARK BREDE
Large infrastructure for small patient data volume
Mark Brede, Head of IT at Wilhelmstift Children’s Clinic, explains the decision to focus on storage virtualization, modular storage and integrated archiving when the organization was looking for a cost-effective data storage system.
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The Wilhelmstift Children’s Clinic in the free Hanseatic City of Hamburg specializes in the treatment of children. However, even small patients generate large volumes of data in the clinic’s IT system. A reliable and, at the same time, cost-effective data storage system is therefore a top requirement.
The clinic
opted for a modern IT infrastructure to ensure accessibility to the growing volumes of data. Its solution focus is on storage virtualization through VMware and Xenserver, and the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2100 midrange system with integrated archiving using the Hitachi Content Platform from Hitachi Data Systems.
“The system looks after itself. That’s the best thing that could happen to a system administrator,” says Head of IT at the Wilhelmstift Children’s Clinic, Mark Brede, referring to the clinic’s newly purchased storage system. The Adaptable Modular Storage 2100 has been operating at the Hamburg clinic since
August 2009.
Brede’s opinion takes on further significance when considering the size of the clinic. Wilhelmstift has over 48,000 patients, making it one of the
largest of its kind in Germany. More than 700 staff members are responsible for the treatment and care of children ranging from 0 to 16 years of age. Since the legal requirements for patient data retention periods range up to 30 years, these considerations are not least among the factors impacting on the large volumes of data.
Out with the Old, in with the New Prior to upgrading to the new Adaptable Modular Storage 2100, the clinic stored its data on an Adaptable Modular Storage 200 system. Since service for the old system had expired and performance and storage demands had further increased, Wilhelmstift decided on a replacement. The new IT infrastructure was implemented with the collaboration of solutions partner Computacenter. “Having had extremely positive experiences with Adaptable Modular Storage 200, our minds were quickly made up in favor of the Adaptable Modular Storage 2100 model,” explains Brede. “This allowed us to upgrade without having to stray from the principal concept and start from scratch.” The previous practice of combining storage with a Microsoft® Cluster was
therefore maintained and transferred to the new system. The migration process took a week, during which the project administrators copied the data offline within approximately only three hours.
More Performance, Less Hardware
Thanks to the implemented virtualization system, Brede’s team was able to bid farewell to the old hardware. Among the key reasons for this was the performance of the new storage system. The Adaptable Modular Storage model uses a dual controller, operating in a symmetric active-active mode. This means, firstly, that a failsafe is available should the controller not function. Secondly, during normal operation the system uses both controllers, making for a significantly higher performance.
This
approach originated in the enterprise sector where the Adaptable Modular Storage model introduced this kind of technology for the first time in midrange storage.
The improved performance is noticeable. Services, for instance, can be provided more quickly. “The increased performance is particularly obvious in work involving Microsoft Clusters
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