Webinar Recap | A Case Study in Moving to Cloud

Summary

Five years. Five years is all it took for Joseph Furmanski, Director of Data Center Facilities at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, to revolutionize the university’s corporate data centers and evolve it into a hybrid cloud environment.

While UPMC’s data centers now generate income from insurance companies and hospitals spread across the U.S. (as well as a few international locations), it only recently transitioned from an emphasis on an “hospital- and PCP-centric” business model to something that’s much more outpatient-focused. With patients vastly preferring the easy access offered by urgent care centers like MedExpress, as well as COVID-19’s influence on the exploding telemedicine market, it didn’t take long for Furmanski and his colleagues to realize that brick-and-mortar hospitals were no longer the standard option for patients to receive primary care.

This shift in hospital care correlates with the ongoing evolution of data centers, Furmanski explained at the start of AFCOM’s December webinar. While on-prem and time-sharing data centers started out as the norm, the advent of virtualization and cloud providers caused colocation, hybrid, and edge data center environments to gain steam. Ultimately, according to Furmanski, much like what happened to brick-and-mortar hospitals, cloud’s impact caused data center growth to effectively flatten, while network growth and criticality dramatically increased.

With these trends and this overall evolution of data centers in mind, just how did Furmanski and his team transform UPMC’s 12 hospital-based data centers in 2008 to 23 hospital-based data centers, two European sites, and multiple hybrid clouds in 2022?

In this webinar, Furmanski sought to answer exactly that.

Living On The Edge

The 23 hospital-based data centers that UPMC owns in 2022 were obtained through a series of mergers and acquisitions. The initial aim was to move these hospitals’ applications to corporate data centers if possible in order to save the hospitals from needless operating costs.

However, what Furmanski quickly discovered was an underlying need for local healthcare applications that was driven by application latency. This need for local data centers “just wouldn’t go away,” he emphasized. As such, UPMC’s data center team formulated a “data-center-in-a-box” model to transform what data infrastructure the hospital already owned into a package system that Furmanski’s team can monitor and secure remotely.”

On-Prem, On Budget

UPMC currently owns and runs two on-prem data centers: the first is 725Kw and 5.2K sq. ft., while the other is 750Kw and 11K sq. ft. According to Furmanski, “the network has become the most critical application” for these two data centers, due to its ability to connect to other edge and colocation sites, yet the data centers’ daily operations have also been reinforced with a healthy dose of automation, a private cloud, and resiliency.

This incorporation of automation isn’t just a “‘rack’n’stack’ type of thing,” Furmanski said, but instead to provision all of the data center’s virtual systems because “everything we do is now virtualized.” This includes the data centers’ storage, servers, etc. At first, this level of automation was meant to compete against the cloud, but Furmanski quickly realized that it was able to instead complement the cloud.

The virtualization that’s enhanced by this complementary usage of automation and a private cloud, Furmanski argued, in turn allows to enhance the UPMC data centers’ overall resiliency. In short, the increased monitoring and connectivity provided by UPMC’s data center network offers Furmanski and his team an eagle-eye view into each data center’s availability, as well as what components they might need at any given moment.

“This is healthcare,” Furmanski argued. “We need to make sure we’re always available.”

Key Concepts for Colocation

“Colocation taught us a lot of hard lessons,” Furmanski said. “You need to keep in mind these three things: How much physical space do you need? What is the peak power you’re going to consume? And what is the PUE of this facility?”

These numbers and metrics are important to keep in mind because each plays a pivotal role in your data centers’ overall colocation costs. “These people aren’t here for free,” he said. Every cabinet you add, every deletion you make, all of the carriers you install and connect—it all adds up, and the costs can become exorbitant if you aren’t adequately prepared with the right information beforehand. “You have to pay for everything they have to do for you,” Furmanski stated, which means that they won’t charge you for everything you can accomplish first.

However, the benefits to colocation can be tremendous, Furmanski argued. Colocation facilities can offer localized onramps to multiple clouds, for example, and can be far more cost-effective than running your own onramps. Colos can also provide “smart hands,” which can either complement or replace your own staff depending on the amount of change you’d like to see or the volume of work your data centers regularly accomplish. Finally, you can also negotiate your colocation renewal at the end of each contract’s term, which can either allow you to potentially save costs, or find another colocation provider if your data center’s needs aren’t being currently met.

What About the Cloud?

Due to cloud’s ability to make each component of your data center’s daily operations either “a la carte” or “as-a-service,” it’s easy to be lured into thinking that the cloud can offer a one-stop shop to fix everything that might ail a data center.

However, Furmanski stated at the end of his presentation, while cloud can offer less overall costs than an on-prem data center, it can also cost significantly more if you aren’t careful. You must monitor and manage the cloud’s operations just like your own data center, and be wary of possible concerns that are often associated with the cloud, such as resiliency and staff retention.

All in all, successfully transitioning to a hybrid environment with cloud, colos, edge, and on-prem data centers is a distinct possibility. It’s happened before—and UPMC is the proof. For more information about how to help your data centers make a similar transition, as well as what obstacles to avoid and what opportunities to pursue, be sure to check out the full recording on AFCOM’s website.

AFCOM has made a full recording of this webinar available to AFCOM members. To view it, simply click here.