Leuven University Hospital Integrates PACS Radiology And Enterprise Data With NetApp Unified Storage

By NetApp

Consolidate fragmented DAS infrastructure to enhance security, scalability, and manageability Storing all desktop applications data and direct-attached storage (DAS) made main- tenance and upgrade operations extremely labor intensive. Allocating storage and moving data among the servers according to shifting storage demands required manually adjusting all the access commands for the help desk, the 4,000 clients, and the 6,000 users.

The hospital was determined to simplify operations by consolidating its storage and server infrastructure. It hoped to leverage the new infrastructure in other areas as well. For example, it planned to store and serve PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) data—digitized X-ray and CAT scan images and cardiology and applications data—on the same network, efficiently and cost effectively. Other requirements were to enhance scalability and to ensure data protection in the event of a disaster.

Centralize information on NetApp unified IP SAN and NAS storage solutions In 2000, Leuven University Hospital deployed its first NetApp storage system for testing. After the initial storage system had performed flawlessly for several months, the hospital began supporting production data on NetApp storage and doubled its capacity. Soon afterward, a second NetApp fabric-attached storage (FAS) system was installed at another site, and NetApp SnapMirror® software was used to mirror data between the two systems for redundancy and enhanced data security.