Founded in 1906, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona is a cornerstone of European healthcare. As a leading public university hospital and tertiary referral center, the institution provides specialized care for complex medical cases across Spain.
As the university hospital for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Barcelona, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona plays a central role in medical education and professional training. Together with the Faculty of Medicine and August Pi Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, it forms the Barcelona Clínic Campus, a flagship biomedical research hub.
At-a-Glance
Hospital Clínic de Barcelona adopted SUSE Multi-Linux Manager and SUSE Multi-Linux Support to maintain 24/7 availability for mission-critical healthcare services and centralize management of its diverse Linux estate (including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS). As a result, the hospital eliminated support gaps for 100 servers, streamlined regulatory compliance and strengthened security with automated patching plus lifecycle visibility and control.
Simplifying a complex, heterogeneous environment
For over a century, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona has been dedicated to excellence in healthcare, teaching and research. Supporting this ongoing work is a complex IT infrastructure that powers everything from administrative services, such as HR and finance systems, to vital electronic patient records and critical medical devices. In an environment with lives on the line, the hospital has zero tolerance for unplanned infrastructure downtime.
Over time, the hospital’s IT team has built up a heterogeneous mix of open source and proprietary operating systems. Its Linux estate spans multiple distributions, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Debian and Ubuntu. The IT team must also continue to support legacy operating systems for specialized software that controls medical devices, as the applications are often not certified for newer OS versions.
As the infrastructure continued to evolve and systems reached end of service, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona looked to simplify the management of its complex Linux environment while securing enterprise-grade support for its legacy distributions.
“SUSE Multi-Linux Support and SUSE Linux Enterprise Long Term Service Pack Support give Hospital Clínic de Barcelona the flexibility to update our Linux estate at our own pace.”
Why SUSE solutions?
Having relied on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as the backbone of its data center infrastructure for over a decade, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona sought to build on this long-standing trust and looked to SUSE for help. SUSE’s commitment to open source principles drove the decision to expand the partnership. Unlike more restrictive licensing models, SUSE’s open approach helps the hospital reduce vendor lock-in while retaining enterprise-grade support required for mission-critical reliability.
To simplify management of its complex Linux landscape, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona selected SUSE Multi-Linux Manager. The tool’s real-time monitoring and automated patching capabilities, combined with integration with the hospital’s existing Ansible automation, appealed to the team because they would be able to manage all Linux distributions, regardless of their origin, within a single workflow and centralized console.
The hospital also selected SUSE Multi-Linux Support to unify and extend enterprise support across mission-critical Linux environments reaching end of support, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, community and discontinued distributions like CentOS. This gives the team access to SUSE experts in case of unplanned downtime.
To support long-lived systems, the hospital also chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS). This extends the support lifecycle of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server by up to an additional six years, helping maintain stability for legacy systems and reducing pressure to migrate on a fixed timeline.
The impact of SUSE solutions
Supports 24/7 healthcare operations
Today, approximately 65% of the hospital’s Linux servers run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, supporting core operations 24/7. Over the years, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has enabled high availability for services across the hospital, helping doctors and researchers deliver the critical care and world-changing breakthroughs that Hospital Clínic de Barcelona is known for.
“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has proved itself to be a robust, stable, open operating system that meets all of our compliance requirements,” confirms Oriol Ruiz, Systems Administrator at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. “It is a sophisticated Linux distribution that is very easy to work with.”
Eliminates risk across a diverse Linux estate
Previously, around 100 of the hospital’s servers were operating without support, risking prolonged downtime for systems vital to healthcare and research. With SUSE Multi-Linux Support, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona has future-proofed its diverse Linux estate. Whether the team is managing legacy Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS systems or new distributions, it now has the enterprise-grade backing its mission-critical infrastructure requires.
With sensitive medical devices dependent on OS stability, the SUSE Linux Enterprise Long Term Service Pack Support further reinforces the reliability of the infrastructure, allowing the IT team to carry out OS updates less frequently where this might negatively impact applications.
“SUSE Multi-Linux Support and SUSE Linux Enterprise Long Term Service Pack Support give Hospital Clínic de Barcelona the flexibility to update our Linux estate at our own pace,” adds Ruiz.
Supports robust security for sensitive healthcare data
For Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, data security and regulatory compliance are of the utmost importance, as it frequently handles sensitive patient and research data. With SUSE Multi-Linux Support providing security updates for the hospital’s Linux estate, the IT team can always be on top of security patching in an evolving cyber-threat landscape.
At the same time, SUSE Multi-Linux Manager’s automated patching and built-in compliance checks enable the hospital to eliminate human error and ensure that compliance requirements are met at all times across the entire Linux estate. Furthermore, its integration with OpenSCAP facilitates automated security audits, ensuring that all servers strictly comply with the security policies and compliance standards required in the healthcare sector.
“SUSE Multi-Linux Manager has made a significant impact in helping us keep our infrastructure secure and updated,” confirms Ruiz.
Streamlines infrastructure management
By deploying SUSE Multi-Linux Manager, the hospital’s IT team can now manage its entire Linux estate centrally, significantly boosting operational efficiency. The team has also found that it is now easier to get new employees up to speed with the complex Linux environment.
“With Ansible, we were already managing machines centrally, but SUSE Multi-Linux Manager has taken simplicity to the next level,” says Ruiz. “Lifecycle control from a single console makes the team’s daily work much more agile and direct.”
At the same time, the hospital has unlocked a single trusted point of contact for support across its Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS and SUSE Linux estate with SUSE Multi-Linux Support, helping the IT team get to the root of any problems faster.
“SUSE Support has been very valuable the couple of times we have encountered problems,” says Ruiz. “It is always a pleasure to talk with the SUSE team.”
What’s next for Hospital Clínic de Barcelona?
Today, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona is in the process of cloud and container transformation, shifting some of its workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). Because SUSE Rancher Prime supports Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), the hospital is using SUSE technologies to streamline operations and strengthen security for the workloads it is containerizing. At the same time, the hospital is exploring the SUSE Rancher Suite to not only simplify its container strategy, but also reinforce security and observability.
“With the eruption of AI-powered solutions, we are evaluating new technologies more than ever,” concludes Ruiz. “AI is particularly of interest to clinical researchers, and we have no doubt that the SUSE Rancher Suite will help us ensure that we have a robust zero trust approach and maintain data sovereignty as we continue to innovate.”