Affidea, a pan-European provider of diagnostic imaging, community-based polyclinic, and specialist healthcare services, operates in 391 centers across 15 countries. Within its growing network, the company ensures that patients receive appropriate and personalized care from leading medical experts.
The challenge
Affidea faced significant limitations in managing its monitoring environment. The entire system was maintained by a single administrator, which restricted scalability and increased operational risk as the organization continued to grow.
The company was using Zabbix version 5.2, which had reached the end of support and no longer met evolving performance and stability requirements. Therefore, an upgrade and HA implementation were needed to ensure continuity of services for millions of patients across Europe.
With a package-based environment, the goal was to perform a complete migration to a containerized installation, making the infrastructure more modern, stable, and easier to maintain.
Another critical point was team development. Affidea needed to train new professionals in Zabbix and optimize system performance, all without increasing infrastructure costs and maintaining the efficiency and reliability expected from a mission-critical healthcare environment.
The solution
After a detailed assessment conducted jointly by Zabbix and Affidea, the following objectives were defined:
• Upgrade the Zabbix platform version
• Migrate 2 separate Zabbix environments into one
• Migrate the environment from packages to containers
• Implement high availability (HA)
• Train the technical team and end users (up to 48 people)
• Optimize system performance without increasing costs
• Get 24/7 support directly from Zabbix Support Team
During the evaluation, Zabbix identified that all these needs could be met through the Enterprise-level technical subscription, a package that combined all required services while reducing costs by 50% when compared to separate contracts.
The applied services included the upgrade from version 5.2 to 7.0, migration to containers, technical consulting, official training with 48 certified employees, a complete environment review, and 24/7 technical support with emergency response.
The implementation followed four main phases:
1. Joint planning: A detailed upgrade and migration plan was created with Zabbix engineers to ensure a safe and predictable process.
2. Execution: The migration was completed successfully on the first attempt, including the simultaneous upgrade of the PostgreSQL database (version 13 with Timescale). The process also incorporated simplified VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) integration, crucial for multi-network environments.
3. Training: A total of 48 employees were trained and certified, including users and specialists. Junior engineers began performing upgrades and maintenance independently, with remote support from Zabbix experts.
4. Environment review and optimization: A joint analysis identified and resolved critical issues. As a result, the system operated stably and without internal alerts for six consecutive months, proving the effectiveness of the improvements.
The results
Having access to a Zabbix technical subscription delivered measurable improvements in performance, stability, and technical maturity. The migration to containers, version upgrade, and specialized support enhanced efficiency without expanding infrastructure or operational costs. Other benefits included:
• A 116% growth in data processing capacity, from approximately 3,000 to 6,500 new values per second
• An increase from about 3,000 to 4,500 monitored hosts, with no performance degradation
• Six consecutive months without internal alerts after optimization
• Total cost of ownership (TCO) maintained despite a doubling of system capacity
• 48 certified employees, which strengthened team autonomy and expertise
• Successful first-attempt execution of the migration and upgrade process
Conclusion
By utilizing the Enterprise support subscription, which includes upgrades, consulting, environment reviews, and training service, Affidea achieved cost savings of up to 50% when compared to purchasing these services individually.
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