Client:

Major Regional Trauma Center

 

Industry Background:

Many hospitals are expanding their IT infrastructure to meet patient demand and take advantage of network- connected technologies. However, hospitals must dedicate as much space as possible to patient care, strictly limiting available data center real estate. Colocation facilities provide a cost- and space-efficient alternative to an on-premises data center.

 

Project Summary:

A major regional trauma center had been undergoing an expansion for several years, and made the strategic decision to relocate its data center infrastructure to a colocation facility. This involved the migration of about 200 pieces of equipment, some of which supported the hospital’s mission-critical Epic electronic medical records (EMR) system.

 

The hospital had a longstanding relationship with a value-added reseller (VAR) that serves the Rocky Mountain region. Lacking the experience and resources to execute the move, the VAR turned to SirviS for help. The SirviS team met with the VAR and the end customer, and quickly proving they had the expertise and experience to complete the project.

 

SirviS provided turnkey, “white glove” services that were precisely tailored to the hospital’s needs. Experienced project and technical staff utilized a well-documented and transparent methodology from initial planning, site surveys and audits through decommissioning of the equipment at the hospital and recommissioning at the colocation site.

 

Project Specifics:

The success of any data center migration project depends upon upfront planning to mitigate risk. The planning phase for this project took about six months, beginning with an assessment of the data center facility and the development of the baseline project scope. The SirviS team then conducted an extensive audit of the systems and their interdependencies in order to map out a detailed migration plan. The plan went through multiple iterations of scope review and revisions.

 

The final plan comprised four phases to be executed over several weeks. SirviS first moved 60 physical servers, then migrated three racks of equipment that supported the Epic EMR platform. Phase three involved the migration of storage and Cisco UCS servers, and phase four involved relocating about 30 network and security devices.

 

Because the hospital requires 24x7 availability, the move had to be executed with minimal downtime. Additionally, all of the equipment had to be tracked via GPS and moved in secure vehicles with a security escort to meet HIPAA requirements.

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SirviS had to protect the hospital building and the people in and around it as well as the sensitive IT equipment. During the move, the SirviS team used elevator covers, Masonite for the flooring and other infrastructure components to ensure safety.

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The hospital is able to utilize its former data center space to deliver healthcare services, and focus in-house IT staff resources on business-enabling initiatives rather than data center maintenance. By hosting its equipment in a colocation facility, the hospital is assured of the highest levels of availability and physical and logical security.