Extending the life of network infrastructure

When the resources are scarce and vitally important, every network administrator will probably agree that some upgrade cycles are so crucial that they feel like standing at a crossroads. In case of Třinec Hospital that was true on many levels.

For many centuries Třinec, a statutory city in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic, has been at the crossroads of three cultures: Czech, Polish and German. In fact, the city is an important cultural center of the Polish minority up to this day. Interestingly enough, the diversity that permeates Třinec can be also attributed to the network infrastructure at the local hospital.

With around 800 employees and 370 beds, Třinec Hospital may not be the largest one in the world, nevertheless it is a critical health facility for more than 35,000 inhabitants of the city and its surroundings.

A multi-vendor IT environment of 12 buildings interconnected by 1 and 10 Gb optical cables (all blocks have dual routes – Spanning Tree), including 2 separate server rooms, 7 physical servers and 46 virtual servers, ensures connectivity to approximately 1000 devices, big and small alike – from the staff’s and guest smartphones to hefty medical machines like MRI.

At the core, we have the powerful and compact Summit switches from Extreme Networks – their subsequent generations have been in use here since the early 2000s.

“Třinec Hospital’s core switches are based on the EXOS – a highly resilient, modular core-class operating system that offers high availability, manageability and versatility”, says Michal Zlesak, Sales Director Central & South Eastern Europe at Extreme Networks. “In the vein of Extreme’s high performance, non-blocking hardware technology, Summit switches simplify network deployments through the use of various hardware and software elements throughout the network”.

Running a multi-vendor network environment has its natural advantages, although with each new ingredient added to the mix, the need for a better control of your infrastructure becomes more and more evident, due to the differing interfaces and capabilities of various devices.

“At some point in time we decided that we needed a better control over our existing network infrastructure. Our Wi-Fi, for example, was running on OEM devices which effectively had no viable management system”, says Tomáš Walach, Head of ICT Department at Třinec Hospital. “Since we have had great experience with Extreme products for more than 20 years, in 2020 we decided to implement a new management platform: ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine”.

ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine, which extends the award-winning ExtremeCloud IQ cloud management platform to both third party and non-cloud native devices, delivered true end-to-end network management and visibility of all devices for Třinec Hospital.

What were the key advantages that convinced the facility’s small IT team of 3 network administrators to go with this particular solution?

“The solution not only was able to provide us task automation, access control, and granular visibility with real-time analytics, it also combined it with efficient device management across vendors for a complete picture of our network, making it a perfect choice for a dense and diverse environment like ours”, Tomáš Walach explains.

Although the healthcare sector in general isn’t exactly overflowing with enough staff, Třinec Hospital’s IT team led by Tomáš Walach is really active in terms of bringing the digital transformation initiatives to life. Introducing a new umbrella-based management system is not their final word – if anything, it’s a solid base and a staging point for future infrastructure upgrades. The hospital is currently considering Fabric switches for more network simplification, automated changes and network segmentation, as well as new Wi-Fi 6 access points.

Speaking of wireless, Tomáš Walach and his colleagues agree that their Wi-Fi will most probably be moved to the cloud in the near future. Right now, ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine provides Třinec Hospital’s IT team the much needed flexibility, both in terms of being able to manage networks in the cloud or on-premises and optimize their spending.

“Instead of paying one big lump sum, we were able to spread it across years. And then there is this benefit of getting the analytics and all the other tools with the Pilot license that you would normally have to buy perpetual licenses for”, says the Head of ICT Department at Třinec Hospital. “We may not be using a full public cloud version of ExtremeCloud IQ just yet, but we are open to move someday to a fully cloud-managed environment. Combining the next generation Wi-Fi access points with powerful cloud management should streamline and simplify every aspect of our network operations, from deployment to support. As far as the Extreme solutions are concerned, I can say we are extremely satisfied with what we’ve got so far”.

“We are very happy that we were able to approach Třinec Hospital’s needs with a multi-vendor solution, leveraging the current hardware while facilitating future investments. It goes to show that instead of an immediate ‘rip and replace’, health facilities can cost-effectively extend the life of their existing network infrastructure – an extremely helpful ability in these difficult, pandemic times”, Michal Zlesak concludes.