A financial services company and its IT team needed a data center that could not only meet the current technology demands of the business for processing, storage and network, but, more important, was also designed and built for the future.
CHALLENGE
A financial services organization in Arkansas was experiencing rapid growth through an expanding client base. Its data center, however, was struggling to keep up with the new demands.
The company’s IT team was required to add more load to its aging data center, but the building had reached its electrical design maximum, and the local power company was unable to provide additional capacity.
Whereas the average data center in the U.S. is approximately 20 years old, this 30-year-old data center was well beyond its typical useful life expectancy. Through consolidation, optimization and virtualization initiatives, the company had been able to squeeze out an additional two years of power and cooling capacity.
SOLUTION
The company engaged Forsythe and its data center engineering practice to assess its existing 5,600-square-foot data center to determine the best approach for meeting both current and future demands. A thorough 275-plus point assessment by Forsythe revealed that the existing data center would not be able to take the organization where they wanted and needed to go. Therefore, a new data center was recommended.
Initially, the financial services organization identified a new data center environment to replace the old as the best approach. However, as Forsythe took the company through the discovery process, a better—though decidedly unusual—solution emerged: design and build twin data centers, both approximately half the size of the planned single facility, to increase reliability and redundancy for the organization. These dual data centers, acting as active-active processing environments, would allow the IT organization to have the option in the future of downgrading or eliminating their outside disaster recovery service and using some or all of the operational expense to offset the capital building costs.
Focusing on these concerns, Forsythe developedscenarios for the two data centers. The challenge in anydual data center design is to ensure each data center fitsinto its unique geographic location. While the exteriorsmay differ, the interiors were designed identically tofoster effective and efficient facility and IT operations.
Next, Forsythe created a data center facility conceptplan. This “road map” included a preliminary scope ofthe project, preliminary floor plan drawings/schematics,and a preliminary capital budget. Since designing andconstructing a data center is a large capital investment occurring infrequently, building an “approvable”business case requires significant time, effort andmultiple plan iterations.
Forsythe also organized the site selection process, rulingout less “weather-friendly” locations and making sureeach proposed data center was serviced by separateelectrical substations and differing telecommunicationscentral offices. It was important that the two data centerswere separated by enough distance—so a single episodeof severe weather couldn’t affect both data centerssimultaneously—yet close enough to the company’sheadquarters so the firm could easily staff all three locations.
Forsythe oversaw the entire dual data center design andbuild from start to finish, including assisting in generalcontractor and major subcontractor selection, supervisingconstruction project management and commissioningthe facilities.
RESULTS
The result was two flexible, modular state-of-the-artdata centers, designed and built identically to supportan active-active operational model. The facilities areapproximately 20 miles apart from each other, and bothare Tier Level III designs (providing 99.982% availability)with 6-kilowatt cabinet footprint of redundant power,ultra-efficient UPS and N+1 cooling. Multiple level physical security including numerous cameras, a building management system and an integrated audio/visualsystem are part of each facility. Additionally, all intradatacenter communication is achieved via 10GB fiber unified solutions.
These two data centers will help support the company’s growth plans during the years to come and allow ITto deliver services more effectively, efficiently andat a lower cost. Additionally, the building systemstechnologies incorporated into these new data centershave set the standard for future technology upgrades toother non-data-center properties owned and operated bythe company.
Forsythe’s participation resulted in the project’s achievinga financial result $600,000 favorable to budget and finishing more than 90 days ahead of schedule.
To view the slideshow, visit the Forsythe FOCUS website.
