Texas Technology - Fall 2008 - (Page 18) “We have two data centers. You can’t even call them data centers. We have two computer rooms in the county courthouse. One’s up on the 13th floor and one’s down in the basement, and we’ve had flooding in both places.” — Peter Cooper, chief technology officer, El Paso County Cooper recalled heavy rainstorms in 2006 that threatened the data centers because of roof leakage. A water-related disaster is always a concern since the El Paso County Courthouse is on lower ground near the Rio Grande. The county repaired the roof in time to save the equipment, but weather isn’t the only threat that could jeopardize the equipment. “We’ve also seen water in our lower-level room when a main burst inside the building and water spilled out, and it got dangerously close to shutting us down because it was very close to where we have our equipment,” said David Garcia, the county’s business applications project administrator. “That was another lesson learned: You don’t want to have your data center too close to water.” The facilities department came to the rescue with wet vacuums to siphon water until the spill could be controlled. But as Garcia Photo courtesy of El Paso County go to the Board of County Commissioners for approval. “The county has some property, probably about a half mile to threequarters of a mile away from downtown,” Cooper said. “It’s across Interstate 10, [and] it’s up on higher ground.” Cooper said he expects the commissioners will approve the land, but if they don’t, there are other county-owned lots to choose from. High Hopes The county will use this parcel of land to build a structure to house the new data center. Garcia said the ITD will relocate what equipment it can to the new facility and hopefully upgrade as time allows. This may take time, but the ultimate goal, he said, is to have this data center as a central hub for everything. And what a hub it could be. Cooper envisions that between virtualization technology, blade servers and the additional space, the county could accommodate much more data than it does currently. ITD staff members have toured other data center facilities, and Cooper said he’s impressed with what he found. The ITD speculates that the virtualization from blade servers in the new data center might free up more physical space for cooling and additional equipment. “We went up to Albuquerque [N.M.] and toured the Intel data centers in Rio Rancho [N.M.],” Cooper said. “We went into one room there, a 3,000-square-foot data center. It had 7,000 blade servers in there — 7,000. And that’s before you virtualize them. It’s just phenomenal how much server and storage space you can get in a fairly small physical space.” The data centers were similar Peter Cooper, chief technology officer, El Paso County said, the ITD doesn’t want to take any more chances with these types of situations. They’ve scoped out a new location for the incoming data center away from El Paso’s downtown area. Once the designer assesses and deems the land sufficient, the ITD will to the size Cooper would like for El Paso, and if the county gets 7,000 blade servers, it could amount to a couple hundred servers for each entity. But cutting-edge storage capacity isn’t all the county has in store for the data center. ITD staff members also have energy efficiency on their minds in order to reduce the facility’s environmental impact. The bottom line of green technology in this case, according to Cooper, is minimizing the amount of power and electricity usage. He thinks virtualization might help because if there are more virtual servers and fewer physical ones, less power and cooling will be necessary. The county is also open to using solar paneling, but isn’t sure exactly how much energy or money that option would save. Even so, this is all speculation until a designer is selected. The county released a request for quotes in summer 2008 for a data center consultant who will assist the ITD in specifying the details. According to the document, the county expects the data center to be located within a 5,000- to 6,000-square-foot building with a 4,000square-foot computing environment. The consultant will help develop exactly how everything will work and how the sharing arrangement with other public-sector groups will be defined. “A number of entities have expressed an interest. At this point in time, we don’t have a commitment, but that, again, will be part of the assessment — to determine what the needs are of some of the other entities,” Cooper said. The design firm will meet with the interested parties, assess their needs and determine how to incorporate those needs into the data center plans. “Right now, it’s the county and the city; they need a new data center. The University of Texas El Paso needs a data center, and then there’s the El Paso School District, El Paso Community College and possibly the El Paso Housing Authority.” These groups are among those that have expressed interest, but Cooper said none of them has made a firm commitment. But Cooper and his co-workers probably won’t have to worry about anyone backing out. The local interest in using this data center isn’t dying down anytime soon. 18_TexasTechnology
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.