WELLMONT IMPROVES DATA CENTER EFFICIENCY In October of 2012, Wellmont Health System launched Project Odyssey - a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment with electronic medical records leader Epic Systems. This project would result in a customized personal technology interface for Wellmont physicians, providers and patients. Re-architecting the health system’s data center was phase one. “As with any large enterprise application, there are requirements for both storage and compute, and a highly efficient data center is necessary to host the underlying infrastructure. The Bristol Regional Medical Center (BRMC) data center, one of three in the Wellmont system, was originally constructed in the early 90's when mechanical and electrical redundancy, power delivery, cooling requirements, and availability were not as strategic as they are today. After all, in the 90's health care was still leveraging paper records for patient charting and film for imaging.” said Darren Ramsey, Wellmont’s Director of Technology. BRMC’s 20 year old Data Center capability level was assessed and immediately it became apparent there were improvements and enhancements necessary to truly provide strategic value for the Epic system. Floor plan optimization was necessary to house the additional compute and storage, kilowatts per rack needed to be increased and additional power consumption necessitates increased cooling capacity.

Power remediation The addition of a large EMC data storage array, a pair of redundant IBM servers for the Epic Cache’ database, and a complete hardware/software backup and recovery system equipped with integrated variable-length deduplication technology to securely backup the system data, required additional power delivery. A new Liebert 90% efficient 160KVA uninterruptable power supply (UPS) was installed to replace the aging 80% efficient 100KVA unit, and the 2nd redundant UPS was upgraded to 120KVA, facilitating the delivery of increased power capabilities. Previously all power connections were housed under the floor and presented challenges with proper cooling, since the power conduits impeded airflow. The power connections were revamped to an overhead Starline Track Busway system that allows staff to add a new outlet in a matter of minutes, rather than days to weeks for electricians to build out additional electrical conduit paths under the floor. Additionally, APC’s intelligent 3 Phase power distribution units (PDUs) were installed in the rear of the compute racks that provide load

“As with any large

enterprise application,

there are requirements

for both storage and

compute, and a highly

efficient data center

is necessary to host

the underlying

infrastructure.”

Darren Ramsey, Director of

Technology – Wellmont Health

System

Company Profile

Wellmont Health System is a leading

healthcare provider in the Tri-Cities

region of Northeast Tennessee and

Southwest Virginia. Formed in 1996

with the merger of Holston Valley

Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn.,

and Bristol Regional Medical Center

in Bristol, Tenn., Wellmont is a not-

for-profit, integrated health system

guided by the mission to deliver

superior health care with

compassion and a vision to deliver

the best health care anywhere.

An array of healthcare facilities

complements the services offered by

Wellmont’s five acute care hospitals

and critical access hospital.

balancing across the 3 power phases, and collect ingress and egress temperatures throughout the data center. These power and temperature metrics are fed back to a centralized management tool that helps pinpoint electrical and temperature “hot spots” across the data center and assists the staff to proactively remediate for continued optimization and redundancy.

Cooling challenges Increased server load inevitably generates additional heat and thus creates the need for optimized cooling. The BRMC Data Center was originally arranged in a hot-isle cold-isle configuration. While typically sufficient for legacy data centers with low per rack power requirements, this approach is sub-optimal in such the hot and cold air mixes and creates the need for additional Liebert computer room air conditioners (CRAC) to keep the equipment operating at the recommended temperatures. The airflow has been re-architected to counteract this inefficiency with CPI server enclosures (racks) that provide passive cooling via “Chimneys”. Thus the cool air enters the front of the rack and exits upward into the drop celling via the chimney. The CRAC then extracts the hot air from above the

ceiling, chills the air and recirculates it back into the data center, resulting in 100% containment of the hot air. The hot and cold air is not allowed to mix and create inefficiencies in the data center.

The end result The BRMC Data Center is now updated with all delivery systems concurrently maintainable and is 99.999% uptime ready. Redundancy begins with multiple generators feeding dual transfer switches. Each transfer switch feeds a dedicated UPS and each UPS feeds a dedicated busway for power delivery. All compute and storage systems are equipped with at least 2 power supplies with only half needed to continue operations. This level of power delivery redundancy allows the failure of any power component, while the devices continue to function unaffected. This is critical for planned and unplanned events. Cooling was also enhanced and optimized with the passively cooled chimney racks. This optimization will allow the data center to function on 1.5 CRACs today with a dedicated CRAC on standby for high availability, whereas before the re-architecture the data center required 3 CRACs running concurrently to maintain proper temperature levels. There is also a significant cost saving by operating on 1-2 CRACS instead of 3. The world of technology has seen plenty of change in recent years. To keep up with it, organizations with data centers that are 10 years of age or older should seriously consider modernizing those facilities. Upgrading a vintage data center’s mechanical and electrical infrastructure can boost reliability, efficiency, flexibility and scalability, while simultaneously reducing operational spending. Wellmont has retrofitted its BRMC data center to better serve the Odyssey project and provide the Epic software platform an environment that enables streamlined functionality, high availability and resource optimization, allowing Wellmont physicians and providers to effectively serve the Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia patient communities. This document prepared in collaboration with Wellmont Health System and its participating suppliers and vendors – 2013. Liebert – Emerson Network Power, Emerson Electric Co., Columbus, OH Starline Track Busway – Universal Electric Company, Canonsburg, PA APC by Schneider Electric, W. Kingston, RI

CPI – Chatsworth Products, Inc., Westlake Village, CA