From a Microsoft Case Study:
Client: The Menninger Clinic
WS2008 Project developed by Insource

Prestigious Psychiatric Clinic Improves Availability with New Server Deployment

Windows Server® 2008 will allow The Menninger Clinic to update existing Active Directory® implementations and roll out Internet and SharePoint applications more easily. This in turn will allow for more focused patient care.

-- Kevin Monser, Network Engineer, The Menninger Clinic

Client Profile
The Menninger Clinic is an internationally recognized psychiatric center that serves mental health patients from across the United States and around the world. To provide excellent patient care, the clinic can afford little downtime in access to infrastructure services and custom applications. A successful test deployment of Windows Server® 2008 is leading the way to an enterprise-wide upgrade by the end of 2009.

Business Needs
The Menninger Clinic is an international psychiatric hospital that offers innovative treatment, research, and education programs. The clinic houses 135 beds and inpatient specialty diagnostic and treatment programs. Individuals with difficult to treat brain, behavioral, and addictive disorders are served by the clinic’s inpatient treatment facilities.

Menninger’s 365 full-time and part-time employees at the hospital campus and a nearby office building use 300 desktop workstations with Windows® XP SP2 to access more than 40 servers running Windows Server® 2003, a homogenous enterprise-wide platform serving multiple roles, from file and print services to Microsoft® Exchange Server and SQL Server® hosting to virtualization of line-of-business applications.

“As a healthcare facility, Menninger must meet application availability levels for healthcare professionals using several different specialty applications related to its mission,” says Menninger Network Engineer Kevin Monser. “If an application is not available, then access to essential online medical records and medication systems would affect the delivery of patient care.”

With medical institutions still relying on paper for record keeping and HIPAA regulations, file and print services continued to be crucial to staffproductivity and patient treatment. An aging infrastructure based on Windows Server 2003 had Monser and his team slightly concerned. Even though its Active Directory® directory service and Remote Desktop features allowed for relatively simple user add, drop, and delete functions, as well as file server, print server, and Web application administration, other tasks such as Web server administration and server patches could be simplified further.

Solution
The Menninger Clinic needed a safe and simple upgrade of its application and Web service platforms. Interoperability and the availability of third-party administration skills were more important considerations than implementation cost as these ultimately provided continuing savings during day-to-day operations. Because Monser and his team were familiar with the Windows Server 2003 environment, it was easy to move forward with Windows Server 2008.

Menninger hired Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Insource Technology to consult on the design and test deployment of Windows Server 2008 Standard. The test deployment is running smoothly through a virtual machine, running on Dell Intel-based hardware. The print server handles print services for up to 350 users. The Standard edition met the requirements for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) at Menninger, and may also be used to access applications of Microsoft Office 2003, Windows® SharePoint® Services, Exchange Server, and SQL Server, Monser reports.

It took Insource only two days to manually install the test server deployment using a VMWare infrastructure. “The install was very easy and trouble-free,” reports Monser, who says future server deployments will be on virtual servers using VMWare infrastructure running on Dell hardware. Improvements in virtualization hardware combined with VMware will allow Menninger to realize very low total cost of ownership as multiple virtual servers will run on a single physical platform.

Benefits
Immediately, Monser and Insource knew the streamlined operating system installation of Windows Server 2008 and the Server Manager’s roles-based functionality would simplify deployment. By 2009, Menninger plans to upgrade at least 40 servers to Windows Server 2008 in the VMWare environment.

“Windows Server 2008 will allow The Menninger Clinic to update the existing Active Directory implementation and roll out Internet and SharePoint applications more easily. This in turn will reduce interruption of online applications for all faculty and staff, as well as increase the efficiency for IT staff members for administration of the applications.”

Benefits thus far include:

Simplified server management tasks. Using the Initial Configuration Tasks tool and Add Roles Wizard for server management tasks increased installation and configuration speed by 30%.

Reduced server management time. The Server Manager Console saves time by consolidating server role status, key management tasks, and access to advanced management tools into one interface.

Increased reliability and predictability. Maintaining server management and role addition and deletion tools in single interfaces reduces the margin for error.

After Windows Server 2008 Standard is deployed across all The Menninger Clinic’s servers, the organization plans to look at using its native presentation virtualization capabilities for serving applications to remote users.

Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows® PowerShell, allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.