A large urban hospital complex, Quadrant Medical Center, recently addressed a multifaceted challenge in its efforts to fulfill its commitment to provide cutting edge patient care while ensuring a safe and positive environment for employees and visitors that contributes to the healing process. The common factor in both issues is an exploding demand for data storage .
In recent years, the medical industry has begun the change to electronic patient recordkeeping. This has resulted in measurably improved outcomes but requires an exponential increase in data storage requirements at facilities such as Quadrant. In addition, a much-needed expansion of the hospital's CCTV security system and the recommendation to retain video for six months has created its own immediate and very substantial storage demand. Complications set in for the center's IT department, already working under the constraints of a fixed number of hard drive slots and facing continual pressure to minimize operating costs.
Working within these limitations, Quadrant IT management's dual objectives became maximizing storage capacity for  the available slots while driving down energy consumption and operating costs. The solution was WD's GreenPower™- a 5000-quantity array of 750 GB WD RE2-GP drives, which cut energy use by an impressive 40% compared to one competitor's drive. In addition, because WD RE2-GP drives run cooler, they became part of a strategy to reduce demand on the medical center's HVAC system along with updated servers and DC cabinet power distribution. By saving money short-term on procurement and long-term through a reduced energy footprint, the IT department created exactly the type of success story Quadrant hopes to achieve in every critical operation.
Scenarios are based on standard applications within the industry and do not represent actual company data.
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