East Campus Data Center Construction Project
Background
CNS’s current data center facility was built in 1967, and has been operating 24x7x365 continuously since that time. However, the explosion of Information Technology (Internet, e-mail, World Wide Web, etc.) during the last 2 decades has increased the usage/demand for the existing facility such that it is very close to reaching maximum capacity. In addition, increasing dependence by the University on Information Technology for mission-critical operations has heightened concerns over the lack of second-site, disaster recovery, redundant operations capability. Repeated university and state audits have targeted this as an important risk/vulnerability which needs to be fixed.
A related problem is the proliferation of computer/servers in numerous locations around campus. Departments have come to require these servers as essential to carrying out their various missions. However, the location of these servers within campus office-buildings, and the need to maintain building environmental systems to support the servers 24x7x365, severely limits the ability of UF Physical Plant Division to manage the buildings’ energy usage for improved efficiency. Consolidation of diverse servers into a central facility is essential to being able to realize significant energy savings, and accomplish the University President’s goal of a ‘greener,’ more environmentally-friendly and responsible campus. Additional data center capacity is needed to make this possible.
A third important issue is the need for High Performance Computing capacity for faculty researchers to utilize in pursuit of the university’s research mission. Additional data center space is sorely needed to support research computing.
Goals and Objectives
Implement the IT Action Plan recommendation to create a second-site data center for UF IT operations.
Specifically:
- Create a secondary site for Enterprise Systems redundancy, continuity of operations, and disaster recovery.
- Provide a facility to accommodate consolidation of college & department servers from various campus buildings into a central site. This will allow for better power-management of campus buildings, reduce power-usage, and save money.
- Accommodate expanding needs for High Performance Computing/Academic Research.
- Accommodate growth/expansion of existing services (Enterprise Data Center).
- Add new services (College/departmental hosting, High-Performance (research) Computing) which do not necessarily need the same degree of reliability/availability as enterprise services (Tier 0 vs. Tier 3).
- Position for long-range growth/expansion of all services via both additional floor-space and increased power densities.
Deliverables
This project comprises the construction of a new data center, consisting of a net 5,000 square-feet of “Tier 3” space (redundantly powered/cooled, concurrently maintainable) for Enterprise Systems and other mission-critical computing operations infrastructure, plus a net 5,000 square-feet of “Tier 0” space (general-purpose, non-redundantly powered/cooled) for research computing and similar non-mission-critical computing capacity.
Current plans call for an initial capacity of 250KW for the Tier 3 space, and 350KW for the “Tier 0” space. The near-term plans call for a ramp-up of each space to accommodate 500KW of computing capacity in each of the (Tier 3 and Tier 0) floors, for a total of 1000KW. Initial construction must include capability to scale up nondisruptively to this level and beyond (via increased power-density, and possibly building expansion) to accommodate future demand for computing facility-capacity.
Project Sponsors
- Dr. Bernie Machen, President University of Florida
- Matthew Fajack, UF Chief Financial Officer
- Dr. Charles Frazier, Interim UF-CIO
- Ed Poppell, Vice President for Business Affairs
- Tim Fitzpatrick, Associate CIO; Director, Computing & Networking Services
Impact
The building of a second, off-site data center will lead to:
- improved reliability of UF's mission-critical IT-based business processes
- improved recoverability of UF's mission-critical IT based business processes, in the event of a disaster affecting the main campus data center
- improved efficiency in UF building energy management, resulting in:
- reduced energy costs
- reduced environmental "carbon footprint"
- expanded capacity for high-performance/research computing
Timeline
Information about this project, including its schedule is available at the UF FP&C Project Information page for UF-350. It is expected to go live approximately August 1st 2010.
