Providing nationwide coverage, Clínica Medilaser SAS is a leading Colombian health service provider. Faced with issues from an overloaded data center infrastructure, the organization’s technology operations team began seeking a partner to help replace its traditional three-tier data center architecture with a hyperconverged infrastructure solution. Due to the positive reputation of both entities, Clínica Medilaser SAS decided to implement an all-in-one solution from Nutanix and Lenovo. Since implementation, Clínica Medilaser SAS has enjoyed the ease of scalability, simplified management, and ability to launch cloud services offered by the solution.
| Ease of scalability | Simplified management | Ability to launch cloud services |
|---|---|---|
| Offers the ability to simply scale up as the organization grows and finds new software, applications, and platforms to improve core functions. | Provides a unified management plane through a single pane of glass with the utilization of a specific tool. | Enables the organization to offer flexible cloud hosting services to other health service providers in Colombia. |
The hyperconverged infrastructure solution from Nutanix and Lenovo has not only transformed our own operations for the better, but also enables us to support other healthcare organizations in the region. Ultimately, this will help deliver high-quality care to more people across Colombia.
Founded in 2004 in the city of Neiva, Clínica Medilaser SAS is committed to delivering high-quality health care services with a personal touch to Colombians, backed by the latest technology and expert medical staff. Since its founding, the company has expanded to operating branches in Florenca and Tunja to provide nationwide coverage.
As a healthcare provider, Clínica Medilaser SAS is dependent upon their core systems (electronic medical record (EMR) systems, X-rays, ultrasounds, etc.) running reliably to deliver its top-notch patient care. However, the growing number and data volume of medical images has placed enormous pressure on the organization’s data center infrastructure in recent years.
This issue led Clínica Medilaser SAS’s technology operations team to realize they needed to refresh the company’s IT infrastructure, but they were reluctant to invest in more of the same. Instead, the team wanted their systems to provide increased reliability and scalability than the existing infrastructure.
“Our previous server and storage infrastructure was seven years old, and it started showing its age,” explains Alberto Mora Bahos, Director of Technology Operations at Clínica Medilaser SAS. “The storage areas in particular were fast approaching capacity, performance was slowing, and backups would often overrun—all issues that had the potential to impact front-line operations.”
To solve this problem and modernize its data center, Clínica Medilaser SAS decided to replace its traditional three-tier data center architecture with a hyperconverged infrastructure solution.
“The simplicity, scalability, and availability that a hyperconverged infrastructure offers were major deciding factors,” explains Mora Bahos. “We were drawn to the centralized software-defined approach and unified management plane.”
The organization quickly narrowed down their search to the Nutanix and Lenovo solution. “The fact that Nutanix is a leader in the hyperconverged infrastructure space and Lenovo offered greater hardware stability to other vendors, it was an easy decision in the end,” says Mora Bahos.
Clínica Medilaser SAS implemented Lenovo ThinkAgile HX5520 appliances at its Neiva site, configured as a single software-defined cluster with Nutanix Cloud Platform.
“Nutanix and Lenovo provided us with excellent support,” says Jaime Beltran, Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Clínica Medilaser SAS. “They brought in their own experts to guide us through the installation and migration to ensure that everything went smoothly.”
The new hyperconverged infrastructure provides 175 TB storage capacity and supports over 60 virtual machines, virtualized with Nutanix AHV. Virtualized compute and storage resources are managed through a single pane of glass with the Nutanix Prism tool. The hyperconverged infrastructure underpins a wide range of workloads including EMR, picture archiving and communication system (PACS) solutions, SQL databases, and more.
By implementing the new solution, Clínica Medilaser SAS has gained a robust and scalable platform that helps to reliably support its front-line medical services as one of the most modern, resilient data centers in the region.
“Since implementing the Nutanix and Lenovo solution, availability and performance issues have become a distant memory,” details Beltran. “We have barely scratched the surface in terms of memory, compute, and storage capacity. We have plenty of room for growth built into the cluster, so we’re well-equipped for future growth in areas like diagnostic imaging.”
Recently, Clínica Medilaser SAS launched private cloud hosting services for other companies to better serve the healthcare needs of the entire nation of Colombia.
“The state-of-the-art hyperconverged infrastructure combined with our industry experience allows us to offer healthcare companies reliable services that meet their availability, data protection, and security requirements,” shares Mora Bahos. “We are proud to help other organizations reap the rewards of hyperconverged infrastructure.”
In the future, Clínica Medilaser SAS plans to expand its hyperconverged infrastructure cluster to offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to other healthcare organizations in the region such as local clinics.