by Angela Miller
Not every company gets to invest in the top-of-the-line data center to run their operations.  In fact, I would imagine that most IT people reading this would agree that we face serious constraints in our data centers.  Unless the company’s core business is technology, spending money on the rooms and spaces that house the technology infrastructure often ranks far lower in the executive mind than other operational concerns.

So as I walked into my new role as CIO for the NCTD, I knew that there were going to be issues with my core infrastructure and facilities.  On the one hand, NCTD has invested wisely in the basic facility infrastructure.  Unlike some SMB and governmental agencies, we do in fact have a true data center.  We have fire suppression, and a nice footprint, and standard data center design from the 1980s.  I was pleasantly surprised to have this as a foundation on which to build.

But we also face significant challenges in that space – we have a clash of the old and the new – with both a Prime mini-computer occupying a significant portion (almost 30% of the footprint) of the room, and racks full of rack-optimized computers.  There has been no investment in newer thinking about the data center – blades, virtualization, storage area networks, etc.  Of greatest concern for me are power and air handling.  My data center has two Carrier units that intake the air on floor-level and blow out the cooler air through a large set of blowers.  The torrent of air that whooshes through this small room is impressive.

We installed some environmental monitoring devices and discovered that in addition to the obvious problems with the air handling, we also now have a significant humidity issue.

So we have decisions to face at the company- do we invest in upgrading the data center?  Do we move instead to a co-location facility?  How are we going to handle disaster recovery?  These questions form an excellent backdrop for a question more pertinent to this blog – is it possible to employ greener approaches to the technology while still living within our means?  Will I have a business case for a more sustainable data center?

My intent is to focus over the next several months on my data center challenges in this blog to see whether I can make that business case.  It will be challenging, especially for a small team on a tight capital investment budget.   But I believe that making small, but greener, choices at NCTD will cumulatively lead to a more sustainable technology program for the District.