February 20, 2012

NEWARK, Ohio – Back in the early 20th century, pen and paper were more than sufficient for record-keeping when the hospital in Licking County, Ohio was operating with nine donated beds. A lot has happened since the facility opened in a nine-room house located in a growing community 30 miles east of the state’s capitol.

Today, the 227 bed Licking Memorial Hospital (LMH) supports a staff of more than 1,600 professionals and boasts a 21st century electronic record-keeping system. Anchoring that system is a new 4,000-square-foot data center, completed in 2011.

“The new data center is the proactive solution that resulted from a comprehensive review of our ever-increasing digital storage needs,” said Rob Montagnese, Licking Memorial Health Systems President & CEO, “We felt that it was imperative to invest financial resources to ensure the safety of the Health Systems’ digital files and patient information.”

“Our new data center is definitely one of the most advanced in central Ohio,” explains Sallie Arnett, Vice President Information Systems, “the level of sophistication we are using is at, or above, what you’d typically find in most major healthcare facilities and is on par with many major sites such as the banking industry.”

Meeting ever-increasing demand
The healthcare industry’s demand for data and data storage has more than kept pace with advances in computer technology and data managers within the industry are hard-pressed to keep up.

“A couple of years ago, we began to realize that it wouldn’t be long and we’d be running out of space in our existing data center,” points out Chris Keck, Director of Contracts Management, “so we began discussing a variety of options. But, with the existing data center physically about out of space, we didn’t take long to settle on building a new facility.”

“Not only were we out of space, but our data center was really taxing some of our existing equipment, especially when it came to cooling,” explains Jeff Kovalik, Director of Engineering Services. “As we continued to add components to that room, we added more heat and required more cooling. We were using Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units and had installed an additional 22-tons of cooling, but it just wasn’t enough.

“The data center expanded exponentially during the 10 years that I have worked at LMH,” contributes Senior Systems Analyst Justin Sturgill. “Just 10 years ago, it had only six racks, today it’s almost completely full. That’s because so much has changed in the medical field. We have to store all kinds of images for radiology, for example. Images that were once stored as film. And, we keep records for all physicians of Licking Memorial Health Systems.”

“Even though all these files are compressed,” Sturgill adds, “When you go ‘paperless’ you trade your stacks of paper for racks of hard drives.”

Beginning the process
When the decision was made to create a new data center, the staff met with all individuals who might be involved in the project to address all possible options and concerns. That team included architects, designers, engineers and those who would be end-users of the final system. The plan was to create a data center that would be ready to take on the demands of today yet flexible enough to continue to be viable for the next 20 to 30 years. With that in mind, the new 4,000-square-foot center came to life with only a portion of its available space filled.

Two critical components were addressed immediately: making sure the infrastructure had the redundancy required to protect all its valued files; and making sure the connection to its existing infrastructure would be seamless, dovetailing the new systems with the existing to maximize previous investments.

“One goal was to make certain that we didn’t build something that was outdated upon completion,” recalls Kovalik, “and it was about this time that we were introduced to the concept of inline cooling, and introduced to Rittal Corporation. The concept of inline cooling really opened our eyes to what could be done to address our cooling concerns. It’s more efficient and more cost-effective than the traditional CRAC. In addition, for redundancy and backup support, we would have required two huge CRAC units to do the same thing we’re doing with the Rittal inline systems.”

Rittal provides “game changer”
“As we learned more about what was ahead for the data center, we realized we wanted to have virtualization in the new room,” adds IS Manager Rob Thompson, “and we learned that with the inline cooling technology we could accommodate the additional heat generated independently without dropping the whole room temperature another 10 degrees just to cool one pocket.”

The solution that Rittal offered was what one employee called a “game changer.” It provided efficiency, redundancy and the modularity that Licking Memorial Hospital required. And, the data center wasn’t going to be built around a “monster” in the room taking up valuable floor space.

“With the CRAC system you’ve got a 20- or 30-ton monster in the room and if it goes down, you’re really in trouble,” reveals Kovalik, “and having a redundant system (two of them) can be prohibitive in more ways than one. We’ve been down that road with less than satisfactory results.”

The planning team from Licking Memorial Hospital took advantage of the close proximity of the Rittal U.S. headquarters in nearby Urbana, Ohio, to tour the manufacturing facility and get a closer look at the Rittal LCP inline cooling products. During that visit, the group witnessed a series of tests that helped to make believers of them. They learned that if one LCP unit goes down for any reason, the others in the room will take up the slack and cool the equipment to safe levels in a matter of minutes.

“Seeing that test, we were impressed by how immaterial spikes in temperature really could be. If one unit went offline, it was only five minutes or so and the temperatures were all back to normal,” says Keck of the tour. “The overall temperature only varied a degree or two.”

The modular design of the LCP units is impressive,” adds Kovalik. “The high-efficiency fans are critical elements and they are standardized, independent units that can be easily swapped out in a matter of seconds.”

“And when you do have to do maintenance, you can keep everything moving without a problem,” interjects Thompson. “An added plus is the fact that the overall working conditions are so much better – you can work in the room without wearing a cap and jacket like in the old days.”

The working temperature of the room is more like a traditional office environment than the old-fashioned data center because the room temperatures can be kept higher. When it first opened, the new data center’s room temperature was set at 68 degrees, but plans included bumping that up a bit, according to Sturgill.

Cooling at warmer temperatures
With new equipment in place, the new data center is operational, but the staff points out that in the early days it had virtually no load on it when compared to the older center. With the limited cooling requirements, cooling water temperatures have been set at 52^oF rather than an industry standard of closer to 40^oF – requiring less energy and reducing cost. Even as the load increases, the temperature of the cooling water won’t have to be lowered.

“The decision to go with the inline liquid cooling solution was really pretty easy once we had all the facts,” concludes Kovalik.

That decision was clearly the right one, reinforced by a test of the installed system in the Newark facility. The installation includes 36 Rittal enclosures supported by 16 LCP air-to-water heat exchangers. During the in-house tests, four of the LCP units were shut down completely and the overall room temperature rose just 2^oF. “We’d been so concerned with those CRAC units and what would happen if they went down – if that happened previously, the room temperature would be approaching shut-down or failure levels in a very short time,” said Sturgill.

Meeting commitments
The older data center hasn’t yet been phased out completely. As hardware and software is replaced and upgraded it goes into the new data center. While the process may seem slow, it allowed the Hospital to change to the new data center without any shutdowns or disruptions in systems operation – a critical element when dealing with health care records and diagnostic technology.

Making the move from one data center to the next went smoothly and the overall construction and completion of the new data center was a juggling act driven by the Hospital’s project management mantra of four key words: On Budget, On Schedule.

“Everyone was aware from the beginning of our tight schedule to make this whole project come together,” explains Keck, “and everyone was confident we’d make our January 1, 2011 target date. Having Rittal involved in those scheduling meetings was critical, too. As an end-user, it’s important to have confidence that a supplier will deliver as promised. You always have that ‘I’ve heard this before’ thought, but when they said they would deliver, they delivered. We’d committed to senior management and the community that we’d have it done and we were able to live up to that commitment.”

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