H3C Healthcare Service Solution Based on Unified Infrastructure System (UIS) Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

I. Background

The information system construction of most hospitals has achieved some great results and computers have been widely used by healthcare workers. However, the O&M of PCs affects the working efficiency and innovation awareness of the medical staff using PCs for work. It is crucial to build a PC terminal system that is lightweight and easy to maintain for the information-based transformation of hospitals.

In recent years, the implementation of technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing promotes the reform of data centers in medical institutions, changing the traditional construction and management methods. The Outline of the National Healthcare Service System (2015-2020) clearly stated that new technologies such as mobile Internet, IoT, cloud computing, and wearable devices should be actively adopted to promote the development of health information and smart medical services that benefit the public.

At present, the shortcomings of the traditional data center infrastructure emerge gradually when faced with complex management businesses and new businesses such as online diagnosis and treatment. Separate hardware resources, scattered management policies, and slow service deployment have affected the deployment and operating of upper layer systems to some extent, especially various new systems with microservices-based architectures. Hardware resources of traditional data centers are not flexible enough to deploy such service systems.

II. User pain points

Separate hardware resources

The IT resources cannot be flexibly scheduled with relatively low utilization due to immobile resources and the island-style construction of traditional data centers of hospitals.

Slow service deployment

When deploying a new service system such as the EMR and integrated information platform, the user needs to prepare the hardware resource first, configure the network, and then install the OS, middleware, and security system, and finally install the service system. The whole process is time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Scattered O&M

The various providers of infrastructures such as server, storage, network, and virtualization make the configuration and management of those infrastructures much isolated and separate. The O&M personnel need to maintain each system one by one. When a fault occurs, it is time-consuming for the O&M personnel to troubleshoot it, especially for small- and medium-sized short-handed hospitals.

High investment costs

The hardware resources cannot maximize its value due to low resource utilization. The investment cost is increased by a separate architectural design of storage and computing, independent procurement of storage devices, and additional procurement.

III. Overview of solution

H3C healthcare service solution based on unified infrastructure system (UIS) hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) is H3C's next-generation cloud data center infrastructure solution for IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). The pre-integrated Compute Virtualization Software (CAS) and Storage Virtualization Software (ONEStor) help the fast construction of the infrastructure of hospital data centers. H3C UIS provides unified management software for unified monitoring and management of physical hardware and IT basic resources, enabling fast and flexible deployment of businesses. UIS is software-defined infrastructure that integrates various virtualization software such as compute, storage, network, and security, therefore enabling flexible delivery of businesses. It effectively reduces TCO, making it an excellent cloud infrastructure platform for hospitals.

Nowadays, many hospitals gradually begin to build an integrated information platform and establish a clinical data repository (CDR) to accomplish the standardization and effective integration and information sharing among different systems, and realize the integrated application of clinical information, to support scientific decision-making and refined operation. During the coronavirus pandemic at the beginning of 2020, the extensive development of online diagnosis and treatment services in hospitals has good and effective treatment effects. The application of online diagnosis and treatment services is an important guiding light for the information development of hospitals. However, a flexible, efficient, and elastic underlying platform is needed to support the construction of agile services, whether clinical-related services or Internet-related services. Hence, the hyper-converged architecture becomes a natural carrier of this type of application.

IV. Highlights of solution

Integrated resources: The traditional hospital data center has separate basic resources that each system has individual computing resources, storage resources, network resources, and security resources, causing low utilization, low performance, and high investment costs. This solution seamlessly integrates software technologies such as compute virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, network security virtualization, O&M and monitoring management, and cloud service delivery on the x86 hardware platform. It aggregates high-speed networks with multiple sets of hyper-converged devices to form a unified computing and storage resource pool, providing a stable and efficient operation platform for various service systems of hospitals.

Fast deployment: At present, the number of lightweight and agile services in many hospitals is continuously increasing, such as online diagnosis and treatment, and clinical decision support. These services feature fast iteration, wide interaction, and multiple adaptations. The healthcare service solution based on UIS HCI enables the cloud platform to log in to the cloud so that the cloud computing environment can be built in 30 minutes and within five minutes, new nodes can be deployed and resources can be expanded. This accelerates the deployment of the service system.

Simple O&M: The traditional hospital data center boasts separate O&M, while this solution integrates the six functionalities of computing, storage, networking, security, O&M monitoring, and cloud platform. It enables simple O&M operations such as custom big-screen display, one-click check, system health model, drag tools on GUI to form the net topology, and homepage shortcuts, making O&M visual, data-based, automated, and intelligent, reducing the workload of O&M personnel.

Security assurance: Security is of central importance in clinical services, management services, and scientific research. The growth of various external businesses brings new security issues. The H3C healthcare service solution based on UIS HCI is equipped with a complete security system, which is deployed in the virtual machine in the form of components to realize network security functions such as routing, firewall, and load balancing. Technologies such as encrypted virtual machine disk (VMDK), residual data erasure, and data backup provide security protection. Apart from multiple service assurance mechanisms provided at the core layer, data layer, and service layer, this solution also provides security management and security audit, which improves the overall security of hospital data centers.

V. Best practices

UIS 6.5 boosts the development of Panyu Hospital of Chinese Medicine

Customer's background

Founded in 1958 and located in the center of Qiaocheng District, Panyu, Guangzhou, Panyu Hospital of Chinese Medicine is a comprehensive national Grade-III Class-A TCM hospital with complete service functions and advanced equipment. It integrates TCM medical treatment, prevention and rehabilitation, and teaching and scientific research. With the continuous growth of its businesses, the original inter-system transfer method can no longer meet its growing complex business needs. The hospital hopes to build a hospital information integration platform to replace the original numerous point-to-point data interfaces.

Solution

The UIS HCI is pre-installed with hyper-converged software (CAS + ONEStor + UIS Manager) when leaving the factory, and it only takes 30 minutes to build a hyper-converged platform. An eight-node UIS 3000 G3 HCI is used for the construction of the hospital's information integration platform. Currently, the system runs stably and is well received by our customer.

The hyper-converged management platform can provide integrated management of basic resources in the data center such as the server, VM, network, and storage. It supports flexible QoS policies and prioritizes the supply of VM resources for important services, and meets the SLA requirements of key services.

Customer’s value

With perfect reliability, the H3C healthcare service solution based on UIS HCI bears the integrated platform of the hospital and provides uniform data standards and interface standards for the information system construction of the hospital. It effectively allows the integration of different service systems and integrated platforms and data sharing, and realizes integrated application of clinic information, which improves the medical staff's work efficiency and the quality of clinic diagnosis and treatment.