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Legacy Servers - Solutions - What do you do?

Posted by Madness13 2022-06-09T15:09:39Z
Needs answer
Data Storage Healthcare Industry IT

In the medical world - my company is rapidly expanding and acquiring existing medical practices.  Where it can be - data is migrated into our current EMR, but that's not always possible.  Law says I have to hold onto these legacy charts and Xrays for at least 7 years from the last service date of patient.  I'm drowning in old Dell EMC towers and Lenovo Thinkcenter 2008R2 boxes.  

Throwing this out the community to see how others have conquered as I know this issue cannot be unique to me.  I can P2V and move to cloud storage - but don't feel like that is the most cost effective move for a box that might be touched 5 times in 7 years.  

Pepper graySpice (19) Reply (6)
User: Madness13

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6 Replies

  • My previous job we were in a very similar situation.

    We had a large Virtual environment so we choose to spin up new VMs and import the data from the acquired offices. We also had a Co-location in an off site data center that we would migrate them to.

    We would give the Office Remote Desktop access for a few months after the conversion, just in case they needed to double check something after the conversion. 

    The after the time frame we would migrate them to our co-location, and  power them off (of coarse making backups all along), but if needed we could quickly power them up.

    Having them powered off didn't use up as much recourses , just storage space.  

    Then the plan was after the time frame that we legally didn't have to have them, we would put them in cold storage, or physical disk if they decided we needed to.

    At the time I left, we had not put any in storage, just powered them off.

    Pepper graySpice (1) flagReport
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  • I did similar but to a smaller number of servers. Virtual was the only way to go.

    Create the P2V make sure everything works. save it, back it up and only spin it up if there is a need.

    Storage is cheap, especially compared to failing an audit.

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  • I would go with P2V to a local virtual host big enough to hold all the legacy stuff,  then only switch on the VM when required.

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  • Kenny8416 wrote:

    I would go with P2V to a local virtual host big enough to hold all the legacy stuff,  then only switch on the VM when required.

    ^This.

    OP hasn't stated a requirement that the legacy data be kept online and available at all time.  Only that it is available for 7 years. P2V it, back it up to multiple locations, and keep it turned off until you need something from it.  Restore it/turn it on, retrieve what you need, and then turn it off/destroy the running version (depends on whether you just keep it as a backup, or are keeping the P2V on storage accessible to a virtual host)

    How much data are we talking about? Less an a Terabyte?  Multiple Petabytes?

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  • Madness13 wrote:

    data is migrated into our current EMR, but that's not always possible.

    • Which cases did you encounter where migration into your current EMR was not possible?
    • Which causes did you discover for such cases?
    • How do you currently handle such cases?

    Madness13 wrote:

    Law says I have to hold onto these legacy charts and Xrays for at least 7 years from the last service date of patient. 

    The retention period may depend on applicable jurisdiction and on kind of EMR. I would have thought the retention period for standard EMR would be 10 years, and Xrays and data on heavy operations and some other cases would need to be retained for decades.

    Madness13 wrote:

    I can P2V and move to cloud storage - but don't feel like that is the most cost effective move for a box that might be touched 5 times in 7 years.  

    P2V does not imply cloud storage. Storage of your VM might be local on its local host or on local NAS or on NAS of your data center as well if that is more affordable than cloud storage.

    And there exist different kinds of cloud storage with different models of pricing, if you prefer cloud storage and have organized your data in a manner that cloud storage is a HIPAA compliant option.

    Madness13 wrote:

    Throwing this out the community to see how others have conquered as I know this issue cannot be unique to me.

    I've never been in such a situation. And I know that at least in my country, not all practices use storage in a HIPAA compliant manner. I don't know the name of the HIPAA equivalent in my country. But regulation is similar. I worked repeatedly for medical device manufacturers and hence suppliers of medical practices and hospitals, including hospitals of national critical infrastructure. I was already talking with the association of IT directors of hospital IT and a president of larger IT departments of large hospitals after the large hospitals became included to national critical infrastructure. National critical infrastructure implies additional requirements, not just those of HIPAA.

    • Do you monitor and analyze access patterns to EMR and its different record types?
    • Do you use a medical archive as storage for seldom used older records of EMR or do you keep all records in EMR until reaching end of retention period?

    For your business model, it sounds appropriate to us a medical archive for older seldom used records in a multi-tier setup. And when using a medical archive, you may outsource some storage to cloud more easily and using cheaper pricing models of cloud archive storage.

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  • P2V, make sure it is running and accessible, shut down, and backup/archive/deduplicate/compress as much as possible. Create some sort of retention to push most of the stuff to the cheap public cloud or archiving appliance. Donate the old hardware.

    https://www.hyper-v.io/migrating-cloud-easy-experience-choosing-p2v-converters/ Opens a new window

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