4-page Case Study - Posted 1/9/2007

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Rennes CHU

French Hospital Simplifies Workload Management for IT Team with Virtualisation Software

The Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) de Rennes is one of France’s biggest and most prestigious teaching hospitals. To maintain its reputation for modern patient-centric services, the hospital needed to relocate its IT infrastructure to a new building, while continuing to support critical systems. Rennes CHU decided to virtualise part of its server farm to easily migrate and consolidate its infrastructure in a secure way. The IT team chose Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 over a rival offering from VMware. Consolidation of server workloads into fewer physical machines has produced lower hardware and administration costs for the hospital, while delivering greater server efficiency and flexibility. Virtual Server 2005 is simplifying workload management, so that it now only takes half a day a week. 

Situation

University hospitals make up a third of hospitals in the public healthcare sector in France. The Centre Hospitalier Universitaires (CHUs) are the only institutions that cover all pathologies. Their workload—namely medical, teaching, and research—is now being extended to public health and preventive medicine.

With a capacity of 2,000 beds, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes in north-west France is one of the biggest hospitals in the country, handling around 1,530 patients a day. It has 7,371 employees and 1,079 students in its training institutes. Today, it is the top-ranking

In less than two years, we have gone from reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance and this new virtualised technical infrastructure makes it possible to guarantee an optimum availability rate for applications. Cédric Cartau, Technical Division Manager, Rennes CHU

In its first phase, the ageing IT building was demolished. However, the move of the unit housing the hospital’s 100 servers encountered a major obstacle. Some of the machines couldn’t be moved because they were obsolete. The proposed migration also presented administrators with another problem―40 of the 100 servers run critical hospital applications such as the emergency ambulance service, catering, accident and emergency, and admissions. Cédric Cartau, Technical Division Manager, Rennes CHU, says: “The complex operation involved stopping machines, but, because of their age, we were unsure if they would restart. Also, certain critical applications could not be stopped, even for just a few hours.”

The functional capacities of IT in healthcare at Rennes CHU are evolving quickly. They now cover a wide range of professional applications―such as patient monitoring applications, care units, and administration of medicines. The CHU was keen to create an integrated IT environment, but encountered another barrier.

Cartau says: “Software developers are often strongly opposed to their software being used with other tools on the same physical server. This means that a separate machine has to be dedicated to each application. As a result, the hospital required a growing number of servers, which were not used to capacity, and a technical infrastructure that was increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain and develop.”

Solution

Rennes CHU decided to virtualise part of its server farm to easily migrate and consolidate its infrastructure. Virtualisation is an abstraction layer that decouples the physical hardware from the operating system to make better and more flexible use of IT resources. It involves the creation of several virtual machines, each running applications independently of one another, on the same physical machine. After evaluating the two main tools on the market, the IT department chose Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 over VMware GSX.

Cartau says: “We opted for the Virtual Server 2005 R2 tool rather than the VMware programs because it covered all the aims of our project. It also stood out due to its simple-to-use administration tools, ease of implementation, and affordability.”

It took less than two days to create the system cell needed to use the product, so the project entered its operational phase in March 2005. Cartau adds: “In a first phase, we virtualised the 40 servers that couldn’t be moved and then spread them across six new machines, each hosting seven virtual servers.” The remaining 60 servers were transferred to the new building. The IT system comprises:

• 100 Windows® servers. 
• 50 UNIX servers.
• 3,000 work stations. 
• One storage area network (SAN) with 14 terabytes of capacity. 
• A network combining more than 100 switchers and routers.

Cartau says: “This is a multi-faceted technology, which is not just a matter of simply moving machines. Virtual Server 2005 R2 makes it possible for several virtual servers using different operating systems to work alongside each other on the same machine. The clustering of servers scheduled at the end of 2006 will make it possible to take another step forward in the dematerialisation of the technical infrastructure.”

Benefits

Through consolidating server workloads into fewer physical machines, Rennes CHU has benefited from lower hardware and administration costs, as well as greater server efficiency and flexibility. Virtual Server reduces costs by recapturing the unused power of under-utilised servers and by simplifying workload management.

The number of servers has been cut by a sixth and there has also been a reduction in administrative and maintenance tasks, operational costs, and the costs of purchasing materials. Cédric Cartau Technical Division Manager Rennes CHU

Cartau says: “Each physical server now integrates four or five virtual servers. The number of servers has been cut by a sixth and there has also been a reduction in administrative and maintenance tasks, operational costs, and the costs of purchasing materials.”

Administrators Change from Reactive to Proactive Maintenance
Another valuable feature of the solution is the monitoring of server activity in real time. “We can adapt the power of CPUs, memories, and disks depending on the needs of each server,” says Cartau. “In less than two years, we have gone from reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance. This new virtualised technical infrastructure makes it possible to guarantee an optimum availability rate for applications and makes it easily expandable.”

It is now easier for the Rennes CHU team to anticipate service failures. The Virtual Server 2005 R2 tool provides the system cell with a separate screen, which makes it easier to monitor and manage the server farm and maintenance operations.

“If a physical server breaks down, all it needs is a simple click to transfer the virtual servers to another machine,” says Cartau. “This tool also makes it possible to react quickly if a machine breaks down. Until now, restarting an application on another server meant re-programming the links to all the client stations involved. This process, which previously took several days, can now be done in a matter of hours, because the tool makes it possible to recoup the environment of a virtualised server very easily.”

IT Technicians Freed to Work on Next Stage of Modernisation
Reduced administration has made it possible for the hospital’s IT team to concentrate fully on the next stage of the modernisation plan―clustering the machines. “The new dematerialisation of the links between the virtual and physical servers makes it possible to guarantee continuity of all applications, should a server break down,” says Cartau.

The clustering of servers is an important step in ensuring continuous availability of critical applications. If a machine stops or breaks down, only one node in the cluster is affected. The virtual services continue to function because Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 dynamically reallocates the CPU power available to all the other virtual servers.

IT Infrastructure is Future Proofed for Expansion
“Due to the virtualisation and clustering of servers, we have a technical infrastructure that is reliable, easy to administer and maintain, and expandable,” says Cartau. “We’re now able to anticipate the two major demands, which we will soon have to face: the massive integration of new professional applications and the 2007 commitment programme on continuity of service.” 

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For more information about Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes products and services, visit the Web site at: http://www.chu-rennes.fr/

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