VMware announced that Rochester General Hospital (RGH) has deployed VMware Infrastructure 3, the datacenter virtualization and management suite, to optimize the availability, scalability and performance of nearly every application it has in production.

RGH, a community-based teaching hospital that includes a premier heart institute and cancer center, offers innovative surgical procedures and care to the region and beyond. RGH provides a myriad of teaching opportunities and participates in numerous clinical trials. The hospital is a large and complex organization with thousands of nurses, physicians, medical technicians, support staff and administrative professionals. The IT infrastructure encompasses many business applications and patient-critical systems as well as massive amounts of data storage that is growing exponentially. To manage this environment and scale it in a reliable and predictable manner, RGH deployed the VMware platform.

“We see virtualization as a strategic approach, not simply a consolidation tactic,” said Tom Gibaud, IT manager at Rochester General Hospital. “By enabling us to manage our applications and data more effectively, virtualization enhances patient care, streamlines business operations and facilitate sustainable growth. Specifically, VMware Infrastructure has helped us improve application performance and availability, and strengthen our disaster-recovery capability. And before going virtual, our datacenter power supply was maxed out. We couldn’t plug in a toaster. Now, with less hardware, we have capacity to handle whatever comes our way.”

RGH has virtualized roughly 95 percent of its Windows-based applications, including Exchange, SQL Server, the ClinicalCare portal that physicians and nurses use to access electronic medical records, the a solution that makes data available to caregivers via handheld devices, and RGH’s billing system.

“When we evaluated virtualization options, we felt that VMware offered the most robust and comprehensive platform,” said Gibaud. “We believe it’s an ideal platform for our Microsoft Windows environment. One of the particularly compelling capabilities that VMware offers is VMotion. It helps ensure application availability during upgrades and whenever alerts pop up. It literally helps improve patient care by keeping vital data flowing continuously.”

VMotion and other features from VMware, such as Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), have been designed to improve the resiliency of mission-critical applications. In the case of RGH, that means helping maternity wards run smoothly so doctors can monitor the status of expectant mothers and their unborn babies.