Project 1

Data Center Move

Current Setup

  • The company is ACME BioScience (ACME), leasing space in an industrial park.
  • ACME currently occupies space in buildings A, B, and E.
    • Building A houses all administrative offices, as well as the main on-site datacenter. The ISP connection is located in building A.
    • Building B houses the sales and legal offices.
    • Building E contains research staff, both offices and labs.
    • Building E also has a small data center housing specialized software and hardware to support the labs and the work of the researchers.

Project Information

  • The Bldg E lab space is insufficient for expansion. New lab facilities are being constructed in Building G.
    • (Building G was vacated by a previous tenant 6 months ago and is current empty).
  • The researchers offices will remain in Bldg E (we will designate that section of Bldg E as Bldg E-East).
    • Network jacks in these offices are routed via an IDF in Bldg E-East.
  • The space currently occupied by the labs (designated Building E-West) will be vacated and returned to the leasing company.
  • The Building E data center is in Bldg E-West and needs to be relocated to Bldg G; it will be designated the "Research Data Center"
  • All data center IT equipment will be re-used (moved), with the exception of the UPS which is old and will be replaced.
  • New racks will be installed as part of the renovation in Bldg G, the current equipment racks will be abandoned.
  • The renovation of Bldg G, and the relocation of lab equipment will be handled by an outside general contractor. The data center move must be carried out by the existing IT staff.

Budget Information

  • Replacement racks will be installed as part of the renovation budget.
  • Electrical service and network interconnection are planned as part of the renovation based on rough estimates - we need to provide specifications no later than 2 months prior to the move.
  • Cooling requirements have been transferred from the existing space (the contractor is to provide equivalent cooling).

Time Frame

  • The data center move will take place approximately 4 months from the present date.
  • The move will be coordinated with the general contractor renovating Bldg G.
  • The data center is normally operating 24x7. The general contractor plans to move the lab equipment over a weekend, starting 8am Saturday and completing re-installation by 10pm Sunday. The data center can go off-line no earlier than 4 am Saturday and must be on-line by noon Sunday.

Research Data Center and Network Details

  • Equipment:
    • 4 racks
      • 1 UPS
      • 3 equipment
    • A firewall between the Research Data Center and the rest ACME's network
    • A VMware infrastructure with 4 hosts and 2 SAN instances
      • Some VMs host software needed to control lab instruments
      • Some VMs are used to collect and store data, or run specialized data analysis software
      • Some VMs are used to collaborate with other companies and manufacturers
    • 1 physical host runs VCenter
    • 1 physical host is used for IT support (holds images to rebuild workstations and other software installs)
    • Switching gear to terminate building wiring
  • Network:
    • Central IT delegates/routes one /22 IPv4 network to the Research Data Center
    • A VM in the data center serves as a secondary AD domain controller and DNS server
    • The firewall appliance serves as a DHCP server and sends IPv6 RAs
    • Building E is the only building where IPv6 is active, central IT delegates a /56 and routes it to the ISP (but does not support IPv6 in the rest of the network)
    • All buildings are interconnected by multiple fiber strands. Only building A has an ISP point of presence for ACME.