The hospital’s upgrade will see all of its existing storage and processing applications move to an IBM eServer xSeries platform, consisting of one eight-way x445 eServer and two four-way x445 eServers configured as a consolidated environment running on Linux.
Beaumont Hospital had approximately 45 servers running numerous applications which were resulting in high maintenance costs and a lack of space in its IT centre. Its aim was to implement a flexible IT infrastructure that would reduce fixed IT costs but also grow in
line with business needs.
Following an open tender advertised in the European Journal, the hospital formed an internal evaluation team made up from various departments, auditors and medical consultants from within the hospital. ‘To help us make the decision on which vendor to go with, our evaluation team weighed up the potential return on investment, risk and flexibility of each solution, said IT manager Peter Connolly. Following a closely contended tendering process, IBM proved to be ahead with cost-effective proven technology and experience in a Linux/Open Source environment which was a key requirement. We also consulted with Gartner and other external organisations that had used IBM in a mixed environment in order to get a third-
party opinion, and we were impressed with what we saw’
The combination of the three eServer xSeries 455 machines will replace the existing servers, which will result in a consolidation of the overall server infrastructure. The new infrastructure will see one 8-way x445 eServer at the centre of the infrastructure, replacing
the numerous servers that were previously employed. A further 4-way xSeries 445 machine will sit alongside this to take any peaks in the work load. The machines will run VmWare virtualisation software and feed two IBM enterprise storage servers running Tivoli Storage Manager. Another xSeries 445 machine will reside in the hospitals Business Continuity and Recovery Service (BCRS) site, in a separate location creating a mirrored infrastructure with help of IBM’s Flashcopy and Peer to Peer Remote Copy software to ensure that any failure is avoided.
Tony Kenny, IT Director at the Hospital said: ‘We chose a Linux platform because of its engineering stability, its superior performance and its cost saving benefits. The consolidation of our servers into one mainframe architecture means that we are able to
manage the multiple business applications from one machine, avoiding random failure patterns that plagued us under the old infrastructure.’
24/01/05
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers