Extending the life of network infrastructure

ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine supports multi-vendor environment in a Czech hospital

Public healthcare sector in Europe has been going through some difficult times long before the pandemic hit, often ailing for staff and new investments in IT. Extreme Networks solutions employed at the Třinec Hospital prove that with the right software, health facilities can leverage their existing hardware, even in the most diverse environments!

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.

Photo: Třinec Hospital

A diverse environment

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.

Photos: Třinec Hospital

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”.

Photo: Třinec Hospital

An umbrella based management system

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 ability to detect wrong configuration of local software agents – instead of downloading updates from a local secured server, it's downloaded from the public Internet.
• Visual help provided by maps for detecting missing VLAN configurations in the network nodes.
• Better planning of configuration backups – utilized in less-exposed times outside of the critical application peak use, thanks to comprehensive application analytics.
• Visibility and control over the multi-vendor environment – the IT Team has great visibility into what is connected to the network and the ability to isolate vulnerabilities, insecure devices, etc., extending even into the wireless network.
• The ability to search for any device very easily, even after being moved from one place to another, online and real time. With a precise inventory, Třinec Hospital’s IT team can check for unwanted devices in the network, which is crucial in the age of medical IoT devices and increased attacks on hospitals in the Czech Republic.
• Unified security of the wired and wireless networks with in-depth visibility and control over users, devices, and applications. The IT team can locate, authenticate, and apply targeted policies to users and devices for secure BYOD, guest access, and IoT, all through a single integrated user interface.
• Blocking malicious communication with port policy enforcement (e.g., DHCP traffic) when connecting medical devices. The solution delivers granular policy controls that enable the IT team to comply with policies and compliance obligations in a heterogeneous endpoint environment.

“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.

Photo: Třinec Hospital

A solid base for future infrastructure investments

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.

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Keep your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground

Life is seemingly full of some eternal dilemmas like “how to eat the cake and have it, too?” or “how to extend cloud management to third party and non-cloud native devices?”. Unfortunately, we can't help with the former, but we can help with the latter.