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- CANCOM installs redundant infrastructure for fail-safe 24/7 operation
- Hospital benefits from flexible, space- and energy-saving data center in two containers
- Fast implementation of the project with uninterrupted and secure data migration
As part of its separation from a hospital group, Klinikum Peine faced the challenge of creating a new, independent and smoothly functioning IT infrastructure by mid-2023. The municipal hospital, with just under 275 beds and 14,000 patients, opted for a container solution from CANCOM as part of a tender process.
Like any medical facility, Klinikum Peine is faced with the task of securely storing, managing and providing controlled access to an enormously growing volume of healthcare data. At the same time, there are high data security requirements in Germany. But probably the biggest challenges in the project were the tight schedule and finding space to set up a redundant data center. There was no suitable space available at the hospital, and adapting it would have taken too much time and caused high costs. CANCOM therefore offered a solution that solved the problem cost-effectively: the delivery of a fully-fledged data center in two containers.
Flexible, secure and highly available
In view of the Hospital Future Act (Krankenhaus Zukunftsgesetz, KHZG), which is intended to improve the digital infrastructure in German hospitals, the hospital also placed great emphasis on its own digitalization and IT security. “With CANCOM’s container solution, we ensure secure as well as highly available operation and offer the hospital a space-saving and sustainable way to operate a modern data center itself. The performance of the data center can be flexibly adapted to current requirements at any time,” explains Bernward Anders, VP Sales for CANCOM’s Hanover site.
Redundant infrastructure for smooth 24/7 operation
CANCOM supported Klinikum Peine from the planning phase through implementation to ensuring smooth operation of the infrastructure. Once the migration concept had been completed and the data completely removed from the hospital network, CANCOM supplied two high-security data center containers in which redundant IT infrastructures were set up. The entire electronic data processing of the hospital, such as patient files, medical technology or commercial areas, runs in these containers. If one unit failed, the other would automatically take over. The staff, who use around 400 computer workstations in the clinic, would notice anything. For a clinic with round-the-clock operations, this is essential.
Investment in the future
Despite global supply bottlenecks, the construction of a new IT infrastructure was successfully finalized in just a few months. The hospital was still able to operate without any restrictions, so that patient care was ensured at all times. “I am really happy that these two containers have been installed here at such an impressive speed. This is the decisive step for the modernization, for the digitization of our hospital. It couldn’t have gone any better,” sums up Dr. Dirk Tenzer, Managing Director of Klinikum Peine. By optimizing processes, the hospital hopes to cope with the tight personnel situation in the healthcare industry in the long term and ensure patient satisfaction.
Technical equipment
The two eight-ton overseas containers are equipped with 19-inch racks, air conditioning and early fire detection and extinguishing. A separately installed emergency power system ensures the power supply to the data center containers. In the event of a power failure in the supply network, a new diesel emergency generator ensures reliable system operation for the hospital.
To ensure data availability, CANCOM implemented a synchronously mirrored NetApp all-flash metrocluster. Several times a day, this performs data replication to a third server room on another NetApp backup and disaster recovery system. For optimal virtualization that meets the hospital’s data and performance requirements, CANCOM divided eight DELL PowerEdge R650xs servers as ESXi hosts and four more as physical Windows servers among the containers. One PowerEdge R750 is used for backups. In addition, CANCOM set up a core switch infrastructure with HPE Aruba technology between the containers and the existing data center. This provides Klinikum Peine with a powerful and modern data center network.
Veeam Backup Software and ProLion’s CryptoSpike Ransomware Protection, as well as NetApp’s integrated snapshot and cloning technologies, provide protection for the company’s data. In addition, CANCOM upgraded the Fortinet firewall it had been using to a next-generation model, FortiGate 200F. The new firewall provides the hospital with reliable protection against any cyberattacks through its security processor with high performance, security efficiency and comprehensive transparency. Email-borne threats such as spam, phishing and malware are additionally blocked by FortiMail.
CANCOM also provided the basis for optimizing the hospital’s digitization processes by providing new Citrix Application & Desktop Virtualization licenses. Employees can virtually access all corporate applications, data and services easily, quickly and securely. This has created the opportunity to establish modern remote working in the future. At the same time, IT accelerates software provisioning and updating.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]