Service Alerts

University Data Center

A New Data Center to Meet Strategic Campus Needs

In 2008, the Board of Regents approved a project to build a new University Data Center (UDC) to meet the growing information technology (IT) needs of academic and administrative units at The University of Texas at Austin. This $32 million project is now underway. If you have questions regarding the new data center project, please contact the project team.

The new UDC will benefit campus by providing a secure, professionally managed data center with ample space for campus IT needs.

Free up scarce financial resources for your core mission

Financial circumstances at the university are forcing tough decisions in every department. Using the new UDC offers key advantages to make the dollars allocated to IT go further.

  • Physical equipment will cost you less. The new facility will be outfitted with standard cabinets, eliminating expensive cabinet and equipment purchases for departments purchasing servers. Campus departments that locate servers in their own buildings typically incur thousands of dollars of costs for server cabinets, cabling, power strips, power distribution units, and networking equipment, in addition to the cost of the servers themselves.
  • The network connection is in place. Every cabinet is equipped with a switch that has a 10 gigabit (Gb) connection to the core campus network, as well as a connection to the out-of-band server management network.
  • Staff can focus on your academic mission. The job of managing the physical space and network for your IT equipment can interfere with the ability of local IT staff to run unique departmental and unit labs and facilities. When you co-locate your servers and your staff continue to manage them, your staff will have better tools and fewer things to worry about.

Reclaim space for academic needs

Due to space limitations across campus, it is not uncommon to find servers located in retrofitted offices and storage rooms in older buildings—spaces never built to serve the specialized cooling and power required by IT equipment. These spaces are often less secure and equipped than a purpose-built facility. In newer buildings, providing sufficient power and cooling for such local data centers and server closets takes up valuable square footage and carries significant costs. The new UDC will allow departments to reclaim valuable space for students, faculty and staff.

In addition to freeing up current space in academic buildings, the new data center allows ITS to consolidate facilities where it operates critical campus services within the Forty Acres. The space can then be used for other purposes.

Choose from numerous options for servers and additional services

Departments will have several options for acquiring servers:

  • Co-locate department-owned equipment and manage it.
  • Co-locate department-owned equipment and contract for server management services.
  • Purchase virtual servers, which are appropriate for a wide array of uses and offer significant cost savings when compared with physical servers.

Hosted systems will be enabled with remote management tools that will allow your administrators to manage systems from their offices. Enterprise storage solutions for data storage and Tivoli Storage Manager as a backup solution are also available to customers.

Increase the physical and information security of your IT resources

Servers co-located in the UDC have the advantage of improved physical security, since the facility will have controlled access and be monitored 24/7. In addition, the facility will be equipped with advanced intrusion detection and data exfiltration detection systems, monitored by the Information Security Office (ISO). These benefits will help campus departments meet certain requirements in the Minimum Security Standards for Systems.

Take advantage of a reliable infrastructure with improved uptime

Reliability is an important measure of the quality of a service. Units such as Admissions, Payroll, and General Libraries, which depend on reliable facilities, already take advantage of the UDC. The UDC can help improve your uptime through server co-location.

By co-locating a server in the UDC:

  • Power and cooling redundancy reduces downtime and results in better service levels.
  • Redundant data center infrastructure eliminates the need to take downtime for many maintenance tasks.

Support sustainability by using greener computing facilities

The new UDC embraces the Campus Sustainability Policy and the GreenIT@UT initiative. This puts a strong focus on the efficient use of power and cooling - the two most critical resources for a data center.

In the new UDC:

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis helped determine the best placement of equipment and air conditioning systems to assure the best airflow.
  • Server cabinets will vent hot air directly into the return air plenum to prevent hot air from mixing with cool air used to cool the equipment.
  • Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) will use flywheel technology instead of batteries. This results in higher energy efficiency (98% efficient), elimination of hazardous materials toxic gasses inherent with lead acid batteries, and lower heat output which in turn reduces the need for cooling.
  • Economies of scale result in improved efficiency and reduced use of electricity and cooling.

ITS will monitor and measure power at critical points throughout the data center, allowing for continued improvements in efficiency.

Row of servers in the current UDC.Row of servers in the current UDC.