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Case Study

Transforming Healthcare IT: VMware to a 3-Node Hyper-V Cluster with Azure Site Recovery

Hyper-V with ASR deployment case study | NSN Infotech

Summary

An Australian healthcare institution sought to modernize its server infrastructure and upgrade its disaster recovery (DR) solution. Facing aging VMware servers with soon-to-expire warranties, the institution engaged NSN Infotech for expert consultation.

After a comprehensive assessment, NSN Infotech recommended and implemented a three-node Hyper-V failover cluster with centralized SAN storage to ensure high availability—a critical requirement for healthcare operations.

To enhance disaster recovery capabilities while minimizing costs, Azure Site Recovery (ASR) was selected and implemented to synchronize only the virtual hard drives to Azure. Additionally, a site-to-site VPN was established between the hospital’s network and Azure VNET to secure data transfer, ensuring robust protection in the event of a disaster. Through these solutions, NSN Infotech enabled the hospital to avoid substantial VMware licensing fees, modernize its infrastructure with a high-performance and cost-effective Hyper-V cluster, and achieve cost savings with a cloud-based DR solution using Microsoft Azure ASR.

The Challenges

The healthcare institution had been operating its IT infrastructure on VMware for several years. However, with aging servers and expiring warranties, the hospital sought a cost-effective and efficient solution to modernize its infrastructure without renewing VMware licenses. Furthermore, it required a robust disaster recovery (DR) solution to maintain business continuity in the event of an IT disaster.

The key objectives for the hospital were:

  • Replace VMware and aging server hardware, including storage and fibre switches, with a more efficient and cost-effective solution.

  • Reduce overall costs associated with the current IT infrastructure, particularly VMware licensing and server maintenance.

  • Implement a robust disaster recovery solution to ensure critical systems remain operational during a disaster.

Since VMWare licenses were expiring, the institution wanted to see if they could have alternative options for their setup. 

Implementation and Solution

A three-node Hyper-V failover cluster was implemented to guarantee high availability of the hospital’s critical systems. In the event of a node failure, the cluster ensures continued operation by automatically failing over to the available nodes. This high-availability setup is vital for healthcare institutions that depend on uninterrupted operations.

Solution Details:

  • Deployment: The Hyper-V failover cluster was deployed within the hospital’s existing infrastructure. Each of the three physical servers was configured to host virtual machines (VMs) and utilized a shared SAN for storage. Using the latest HPE hardware, we eliminated the need for a fibre switch, connecting all nodes directly to the SAN (Direct Attach).

  • High Availability: The setup guarantees high availability by ensuring that in the event of a node failure, the virtual machines can automatically fail over to another node in the cluster, minimizing downtime and ensuring the continuity of the hospital’s critical services.

  • Cluster Design:
    • Nodes: The solution comprises three physical servers, each running Hyper-V to host multiple virtual machines.

    • Failover Cluster: All three servers are configured as part of a failover cluster, allowing for automatic failover of VMs to any available node in the case of failure.

    • Shared Storage (SAN): The virtual machines utilize centralized shared storage (SAN), allowing access from any of the nodes in the cluster.

    • Hardware: The HPE Gen11 servers used in this solution allowed us to forgo the need for a traditional Fibre Channel switch, opting instead for a direct attachment to the SAN, simplifying the architecture while maintaining redundancy.
      • 3x HPE DL360 Gen11 servers with fibre channel support
      • HPE MSA 2062 16Gb FC SFF Storage

Results

With this current setup, the hospital now enjoys high resource availability from the modernized servers. Massive low costs associated with VMware licenses, and an easily deployable cloud-based disaster recovery solution with Azure Site Recovery.

Significant Cost Savings

  • Licensing Fees: The migration from VMware to Hyper-V resulted in massive cost savings, particularly due to the elimination of VMware licensing fees. The hospital avoided paying renewal fees for their aging VMware setup. With the pay-per-use model of Azure Site Recovery, they also reduced their operational costs, paying only for what they use rather than maintaining expensive, underutilized infrastructure.

  • Hardware Used: With the following hardware we used, we were able to save the customer thousands of dollars by simplifying the infrastructure setup without compromising performance or redundancy.
 

Modernized IT Infrastructure

The hospital’s outdated VMware environment was replaced with a 3-node Hyper-V cluster that provided high availability, load balancing, and efficient resource usage. This modern setup allowed the hospital’s virtual machines to run smoothly and minimized the risk of system downtime.

Better Disaster Recovery

The Azure Site Recovery solution provided the hospital with a robust disaster recovery plan. By only syncing virtual hard drives, the hospital reduced the cost of storage and bandwidth for cloud backups, while still ensuring that critical data and applications could be recovered quickly in the event of a disaster.

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Key Results

  • Elimination of VMware licensing fees
  • Cost-effective cloud backup solution
  • Modernize IT Infrastructure
  • Pay only for what you use

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Learn more about the solutions used

Disaster Recovery

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Phone: +61 2 9189 1820
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