Round 4
Dec 2000
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Office of the Provost
Compact Plan
Part Two: Initiatives
B. Initiatives Supporting Unit Goals
10. Establish Professional Secondary/Alternate Networking Site for Disaster Recovery and Robust Campus Network
What will be achieved, how, and why it is important to the university
ITD needs more space to establish a professional-quality secondary/alternative machine room. As a fundamental principle of sound networking design, the campus data communications network must have a secondary/alternate machine room site for the redundancy necessary for a robust system, to avoid outages due to having a single point of failure, and for disaster recovery. ITD's networking group currently maintains a nominal secondary site in Poe Hall. This facility is not working and cannot be made to work as needed to sustain, much less grow, the campus networking infrastructure. There are significant problems with the space in Poe Hall:
· The space is too small
· The electrical power is insufficient and unreliable
· The HVAC system is inadequate for maintaining the environment needed for a production-level computer machine room.
ITD proposes to build a new secondary/alternate machine room site adjacent to the Centennial Main Distribution Facility (CMDF) on Centennial Campus. The new machine room will be designed for "lights out" remote operation. The proposed space is in a building designated for disaster recovery and is ideally located near the second main hub of the campus network. We expect partnership opportunities for use of this facility with other units on campus, UNC-GA, and MCNC.
Impact or outcomes for students, faculty, staff, external clients or others
The weakness of the current secondary site in Poe Hall makes the campus data communications infrastructure unnecessarily vulnerable. As the university moves forward with time-enhanced and technology-enabled teaching and learning, it cannot afford unnecessary outages on the network. The new space on Centennial Campus offers several advantages:
· Costs less in the long run
· More robust and faster networking options
· Can accommodate growth
· Protects network from outages
Resources needed
· Approximately. 3000 sq. ft. of high bay space adjacent to CMDF
· $120,000 build-out and around $60,000 lease to university
Deliverables
(We are looking for creative options, but progress cannot be made on this Initiative without additional funding.)