The other day I was rushing off to my first class and quickly grabbed a coffee mug sitting on my desk. The sloshing black coffee spilled over the top and covered a quarter of my desk, missing my laptop by two inches.
Of course now's not the time to be carelessly destroying a computer. But even if the coffee had seeped into my hard drive I wouldn't have lost my data, since I've got everything backed up. I've already had to resort to my backup three times after hard drives burned out, so I appreciate the importance of having a safety net.
It would take a lot more than a spilled cup of coffee to incapacitate the Brown network, but a devastating failure is not inconceivable. It doesn't have to be incompetence; a freak accident would be sufficient to cause some serious problems for the University's IT infrastructure.
Last week's minor flood on the first floor of the Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences is just the kind of unforeseeable accident that could wreak some serious havoc. A mysterious jump in the pressure of a water line caused the cap of a pipe to fly off, covering 10,000 square feet of the building in two inches of water. Luckily, a quick response from Facilities Management prevented the damage from getting out of hand.
Were something like this to happen in the CIT's data center, which runs the whole Brown network, there would be some major problems, said Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper. While the University's data are backed up and would be safe in the event of an accident, there is no backup data center ready to take over in a pinch. This means that it would be a challenge to get the most crucial University systems up and running again quickly.
Of course, not all of the systems that run off the University's data center are so essential that the Brown community could not do without them for a few days. If Banner access were cut off while the problem was fixed, I'm sure that few students or staff would complain. E-mail, however, is another story. So is the system for printing paychecks, which would also need to be brought back online quickly in order to avoid causing financial problems for University employees due to delayed payments.
Before the economic crisis, the University had planned to build an $18 million data center to augment its current capacity. Facing an uncertain and challenging economic climate, the Corporation decided to defer this project during its meeting last weekend. The administration is scheduled to report back to the Corporation in the spring with an updated plan for addressing Brown's IT needs.
Plans for the data center were not yet fully formed by the time they were scrapped last week. However, they had grown out of a two-year-old analysis of the University's existing infrastructure, so some of the goals of the project were clear. Obviously, there is a definite need to provide the University with a fully redundant system that would enable the network to respond to a problem with the primary infrastructure.
Projections determined that the current rate of growth in Brown's data storage needs was quickly outpacing the capacity of the current space. Even with technological improvements in cooling and more efficient machines, Brown's data center is physically insufficient to meet future storage needs. One of the biggest users of data storage capacity is e-mail. Were our e-mail accounts no longer hosted by the school, this would free up a lot of space on University servers.
In light of the recently deferred plans to expand institutional storage capacity, the University should move quickly to transfer e-mail service to Gmail or another cloud computing service. (Gmail has institutional service that would retain our @brown.edu addresses.) It feels like the idea of outsourcing e-mail service has been endlessly discussed by UCS and always appears to be just around the corner. Since it's clear that the University will not be able to provide us with the bigger e-mail server space we all want, UCS, CIS and the administration should work together to make this happen.
The analysis also determined that there were serious physical problems with the existing data center. At the time, there was not even an emergency power supply. While the space has been shored up - there is a temporary generator right now and a permanent one will be installed soon - it is crucial that the University build a redundant system.
Luckily, there are other options besides building a private data center with an eight-figure price tag. According to Huidekoper, universities are increasingly discussing ways to work together to address their IT needs. This might take the form of a cooperative data center. The University is also looking to outsource its data needs to a private company.
Considering the bleak economic times, these options seem more prudent than investing in a new building full of expensive technology. Outsourcing is a smart move from a technological perspective, since anything the University buys will surely be out of date as soon as it's installed. Letting another organization deal with the rapid pace of technological change is certainly a good idea.
But the administration shouldn't neglect these issues; it is crucial that the University address these IT needs as quickly as possible. Anyone who's had a computer crash can attest to how invaluable it is to have a backup.
Nick Werle '10 is a physics and modern critical philosophy concentrator from Port Washington, NY.
