Kufstein Hospital Future-Proofs Data Operations for Continuous Digital Data Services with Hitachi Storage

Tight on budget and personnel, IT envisioned a highly reliable, future-proof technology ecosystem capable of delivering excellent price-performance. “The aim was to guarantee fail-safety and high availability with a centralized storage system. We expect modern technologies to reduce cost pressures, improve performance and provide ample capacity for the next five years. Our image data from X-rays, computer tomography and endoscopy takes up most of our storage space and grows year by year,” explains Roman Haselsberger, the IT manager of Kufstein District Hospital.

The Solution

The hospital selected a Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) G series system, VSP G200, to help accomplish the daunting list of requirements. VSP G series systems deliver more for less: simplified, unified infrastructure management with maximum return on investment. Haselsberger states that the IT team chose the VSP G200 model for its technically advanced feature set and extremely attractive price. Additionally, Kufstein has enjoyed a positive experience with Hitachi as a technology partner.

With best-in-class hybrid-flash-accelerated scalability, simplified automation and automated tiering, the VSP G series systems offer a no-compromise versatile architecture. VSP G series provides a 100% data availability guarantee, nondisruptive data migrations and active-active clustering for matchless resiliency. In these systems, Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) expertly virtualizes, provisions and centrally manages pooled storage across multiple storage platforms. The SVOS global-active device feature provides continuous operations and active-active support for storage volumes that span local and remote physical storage systems. Active-active mirroring ensures zero downtime, zero recovery time and no data loss.

Now Kufstein is primed to meet the hospital’s required levels of service and diverse demands. “We have been very impressed by the professional implementation and quality technology provided by our partners, Kapsch BusinessCom and Hitachi. Now, our existing Hitachi storage platforms can be virtualized via VSP G200 for nondisruptive data migration without downtime, which otherwise could be costly. There is no need to micromanage the platform: The automated features and failover capabilities ensure our mission-critical applications can continue without interruption,” says Haselsberger.

The Outcome

Since implementing VSP G200, Kufstein District Hospital has realized new cost efficiencies and performance improvements. Unifying storage across hospital systems and databases has increased capacity utilization and enabled greater consolidation of storage resources. By automating processes and increasing its virtualized storage from 11TB to 16TB, IT has simplified data access and storage administration. Kufstein has nearly doubled storage capacity for the PACS archive, from 34TB to 60TB, which is critical as imaging technology improves and file size increases. With a forecast for increased storage growth and ever-changing requirements, IT is confident in its highly virtualized, resilient and cost-efficient VSP G200 architecture.

The hospital considers its technology deployment most successful in the areas of digital patient care. Being able to rapidly retrieve data stored across the system is essential to providing superior patient diagnoses and treatment options. Physicians and medical staff have around-the-clock connection to vital information and the federally managed patient data system known as ELGA.

“We gained a future-proof solution for supporting excellent digital patient care and critical hospital applications. Doctors can rapidly access their patients’ electronic health records, allowing more time for quality consultations, improved access to test results, and targeted diagnoses and care,” Haselsberger concludes.