Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust is
usingvirtualisationtechnology to cut the
amount of hardware it uses.
The trust has made 23 of 32 physical servers redundant, which
has reduced operational costs, improved flexibility and make it
easier to manage the IT infrastructure.
Three of the servers that are no longer needed at the main
datacentre have been moved to the trust's disaster recovery site. A
Wan link to the site enables data replication on to the
disaster recovery servers - which have also been virtualised -
if the need arises.
Russell Hornshaw, server desktop and applications manager, said
the move to virtualisation has made life easier for IT staff. He
said, "The system allows us to deploy manage and utilise our IT
staff more efficiently rather than wasting their time on legacy
tasks like manual tape back-up."
He said staff can now deploy new applications in minutes instead
of weeks. Staff find it easier to create test builds before
launching new services, because testing can be done within a
virtual rather than a physical environment, Hornshaw said.
"This saves at least a day a week in time to build and deploy a
fully patched server. The time is now being used to focus on our
core role of managing and maintaining the system to help users
deliver a better service to the public."
The Trust is using
HP Blade servers and VMware virtualisation, and the system was
provided by CSA Waverley.
Head of ICT at the trust, Dave Shelley, said, "We have increased
the effectiveness of our overall ICT infrastructure. With a
consolidated centralised provision we can better manage and monitor
servers, reducing our total cost of ownership and increasing the
productivity of IT staff."