Case Study

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CASE STUDY

Anatomy of a Hospital Client/Server Migration

The Client -

a 120-bed hospital with 15 Clinics located throughout the Illinois valley. The IT environment at the hospital consists of an IT staff of three, supporting over 400 users at the hospital, and 300 users at the 15 remote locations.

Major factors -

that drove the client server migration were Windows NT support was ending, and the age and lack of expandability of the existing infrastructure.

Choosing a Client Server Integrator -

Integrator decision criteria included: proven experience with Windows 2003 and SAN, capability to support beyond the migration (5 years), solutions that would support the hospital’s enterprise, trust and confidence in the personnel we were dealing with, and of course, cost.

The decision -

was made to award the contract to Park Place International. Why Park Place International? Existing business relationship as our service provider, demonstrated knowledge, experience and expertise, able to provide onsite support post-migration, guaranteed solution and lower cost. New infrastructure considerations, preservation of initial investment for future growth considerations, 5 year planning horizon, expandability, data center space constraints, multiple-server management capability, SAN solution.

New Client Server Infrastructure –

16 port Brocade Switches
IBM BladeCenter servers to the SAN
4 IBM x306
Servers Remote MEDITECH Solutions workstations, tape backup server and print server
Qualstar tape library with 45-slot capacity
2 IBM BladeCenter Chassis supporting up to 28 servers
9 C/S Application, File and EMR servers
8 Background servers
2 Windows 2003 Domain servers
4 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch modules
IBM TotalStorage DS4500 Fibre Channel Storage Array
42 73GB drives providing 3 TB of raw storage and 1.7TB of useable storage Expandable to 33TB of raw storage
IBM BladeCenter servers connected to the SAN by Brocade Switches, MEDITECH Solutions remote workstations, tape backup and printer servers tape library, Ethernet switch modules, and IBM TotalStorage Fibre Channel Storage Array’s.

Migration Timeline -

Week 1 - Issued Purchase Order to Park Place International
Week 2 – All components ordered by Park Place International
Week 3 - All of the components received at PPI’s integration facility.
Week 4 - Park Place International integrated hardware components, configured storage, loaded server operating systems, configured servers to specifications, installed and configured the backup solution, completed systems testing. Week 5 - System Installed in parallel with existing system. Week 6 - System and network testing, data migration from the old systems to the new systems.
Week 7 - Cutover to the new systems.
Week 8 - Full production

Project Experiences -

Project completed on time, on budget. Seamless Migration – no impact to our end users. Integrator experience was completely positive. Park Place international delivered what they said they would deliver, when they said they would deliver it. All issues were resolved to complete satisfaction. Absolutely no “out of scope” arguments. No hidden costs or extra charges. The implementation team knew what had to be done and each team member was extremely competent. Park Place International was a pleasure to work with.

Results and Conclusions -

Extremely successful migration project. Completely satisfied with IBM and Park Place International. IT infrastructure is poised for future growth.