The college is modernizing the Jesup data center, which was originally designed over 20 years ago. Given the aging power and cooling infrastructure, our team has been working since the fall to enhance the data center’s efficiency and bring it up to modern standards. Performing the upgrades to the cooling equipment has the potential to reduce electrical consumption of the server room by 438,000 kwh per year, which would be a reduction of approximately 1-2% of our entire campus demand. The Department of Environmental Protection website tools estimate the carbon emissions eliminated would be equivalent to 67 passenger vehicles or 56 homes.
Over the next 6-8 weeks, we will be carrying out various activities in the data center, with minimal disruption anticipated for most of them. However, the only noticeable disruption will occur during the relocation of each physical server from the old server racks to the new ones within the data center.
The data center is moving to a hot aisle containment system which makes cooing much more efficient. All servers have to be moved from their existing racks into this new rack containment system. In addition to the cooling changes, some electrical improvements have also been made in the data center. Our major network infrastructure will also be replaced during this work. We plan to do as much of the work as possible with zero disruption, and so far we have achieved this.
6/13/2023 – Data Center Electrical Work
On Tuesday, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, we will be shutting down half the electrical panels to install new electrical circuits. The data center in Jesup has redundant power, so this should have no impact on operations in the data center. Users of any of the equipment that does not have redundant power have been notified. When running in a non redundant mode, there is a greater risk should there be some other event causing power loss, but again this is very unlikely.
6/26/-6/29 – HVAC Work
New cooling units will be connected during this week and half the existing units will be shut off. During some periods of this work, the data center will be cooled by temporary AC units. The plan is again to have no disruption, but there is the possibility that if the cooling is not adequate during this work some services may need to be shut down to reduce the load on the temporary HVAC equipment.
7/5/2023-7/15/2023 Server migration
Each server needs to be moved from its existing rack to the new containment rack system. Many of our systems have redundancy built in, so when those systems are moved, there will be no disruption, but some of the systems do not have this level of redundancy, and while that server is moved, the service will be down. This impacts mostly the large ERP Systems
Peoplesoft HR
Peoplesoft Finance
Peoplesoft Student
OCR Advance
We are beginning to schedule this and system administrators will be working with stakeholders soon to find the best time for these moves that impact users the least. A daily message will be sent once this schedule is finalized and this page will be updated with those dates.
7/15/2023-7/31/2023 Network Changes
In addition to the more efficient data center, we are also replacing much of the network infrastructure there. During most phases of this work there will be no noticeable disruption, but when we make the final cutover, there may be a 1-5 minute disruption. When this activity is scheduled another daily message will be sent and this page will be updated. The date/time will be coordinated to be the least impactful.
7/15/2023-7/31/2023 Final Power Work
There are emergency power off buttons that were part of the previous electrical system. These have to be removed very carefully so all power isn’t accidentally turned off. (4 years ago, the data center lost all power when one of these emergency power off buttons failed). When an exact date for this is scheduled this will be communicated in a daily message and this page will be updated. The date/time will be coordinated to be the least impactful.