New Site Configuration for HIS System Replacement

[Cathy Girard]

Having never done this before, I would appreciate some guidance with the best approach to the following issue:

One of the hospitals I support will be replacing its major HIS application with a new one, which entails patient processing, order management, master files, billing. I have read through multiple older posts on creating site to site copies, tarring threads, NetConfigs, etc. but would like a fresh perspective.

The version is 5.8.4.0P, Linux platform. Since the majority of threads will be affected, it was our thought to copy the production site to a new site and then make protocol changes in the new site that would route to/from test applications.

There is currently a test environment on the same server, so I would suspect that all of these interfaces would have to be disabled to avoid a conflict with port numbers.

I am interested in the recommended process for –

* creating the new site

* which directories to copy to the new site

* whether tar/untar commands should be used for the copies

* if the same host/port can exist in two separate sites

* memory requirement considerations

* anything other considerations

Thank-you.

Cathy Mentor

Topic

[Jerry Tilsley]

Having done this same thing last year, I started from scratch on all sites.  I actually built a new server as well so I could upgrade the OS level from RedHat 3 to RedHat 5.6.  I copied only a few system managment tools over, all else I created new since 90% of all threads were changing anyway.

[Mitchell Rawlins]

We did a similar HIS rebuild, and we started with all-new sites.  Many of the thread-specific Tcl procs we pulled forward don’t work right anyway.  A lot of times it’s been easier to re-write those procs than to fix them.  For really generic procs worked great without tweaking.

I would definitely go that route if I ever do it again.

[Jim Beall]

We’re in the midst of implementing a new core HIS too and we opted for brand new sites.  No issues that I’m aware of with IPs and ports as long (obviously) as you’re not trying to connect to both at the same time.  We copied a few tclprocs for routine stuff like handling acks, etc. but by and large we started from scratch with variants, procs, etc.  One thing that did bite us was not having enough semaphores available when we started the new site.  There’s a post from me about that on Clovertech somewhere.

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