Computerworld: Extending the life of your data center

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the 1,200-square-foot data center at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering — that means the facility has been operating three years longer than CIO and vice president of operations Joanne Kossuth had originally planned. Now, even though the school needs a facility with more capacity and better connectivity, Kossuth has been forced to back-burner the issue because of the iffy economic times.

“Demand has certainly increased over the years, pushing the data center to its limits, but the recession has tabled revamp discussions,” she says.

Like many of her peers, including leaders at Citigroup and Marriott International, Kossuth has had to get creative to eke more out of servers, storage and the facility itself. To do so, she’s had to re-examine the life cycle of data and applications, storage array layouts, rack architectures, server utilization, orphaned devices and more.

More of the Computerworld article from Sandra Gittlen

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.