New data center smashes barrier
February 2008
A lot of people won't notice, and that's good. Around the time winter turns to spring, a switch will be flicked in a basement of East Fitzpatrick building, and critical, central data centers for the university and Duke University Health System will be united. For most faculty, students and staff, it will be business as usual above ground. That’s part of the point – their work should be uninterrupted. But the collaboration and the state-of-the-art facility are firsts for the university.
The university–Health System collaboration is built atop an earlier partnership. Go back to 2006. The Pratt School of Engineering was seeking to upgrade its own data center, and OIT needed space to expand the university’s enterprise data center, which processes everything from payroll to human resource records. Pratt offered OIT space in its West Fitzpatrick building center, and in return, OIT offered to upgrade the center’s infrastructure – wiring, fire protection, redundant power and more. It was to be a temporary move for OIT in a long-time effort to consolidate the university’s data operations.
Fast forward into early 2007. Duke Health Technology Solutions (DHTS) learned that the home of the medical center’s central data center – Bell Building – is to be demolished in summer 2008. It sits right between Duke Hospital and Duke Clinics, a roadblock to hospital expansion. DHTS's servers needed a new home.
While working on the joint Pratt-OIT facility in West Fitzpatrick, OIT learned that Pratt also had undeveloped lower-level space in East Fitzpatrick. Tracy Futhey, vice president and CIO of information technology on the university side, and Asif Ahmad, who holds the same positions in the Health System, met with university and health system administrators in order to accomplish something rarely done: break down the walls between the two large Duke enterprises and build and maintain a facility collaboratively. The trustees approved, construction began and phase one will be complete in March 2008.
The data center will include redundant, independent power sources, an advanced temperature control system that will allow heat-producing server racks to be packed densely in the space, all-overhead wiring for ease of access and maximum use of space and other features that leave technophiles wide-eyed. The collaboration allowed OIT to build in features it would not have built had it developed the center on its own, for example, larger uninterrupted-power units. All this probably won't register on most people above ground. They'll never notice. That's good.