The Butrovich Data Center (BDC) has a new lease on life with the successful completion of two major projects which wrapped up on May 20.  After 18 months of planning, and 8 days of highly complex coordination between Design and Construction, OIT infrastructure, data center, and network personnel, and several electrical and mechanical contractor teams, the new and improved BDC is now back in service.

 

Both the mechanical and electrical systems directly serving the BDC underwent critical surgery with the wholesale replacement of the cooling system and the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system.  Each of these systems had been in service for 20+ years and had reached the end of their useful life.  

 

Highlights include:

• 30% increase in UPS capacity and capability
• 30% increase in cooling/mechanical capacity
• 50% increase in system redundancy
• Significant decrease in risk by addressing deferred maintenance concerns
• Significant increase in business continuity with installation of brand new systems
• Addressed electrical code corrections
• Greatly increased energy efficiency
• Greatly reduced maintenance requirements and component replacement intervals
• Smooth integration into recent backup generator system installation

These critical improvements provide significant gains in the ability to provide expanded services, and to enable planned research computing growth opportunities.  The BDC is now poised to provide new and innovative capabilities for many years to come.

 

These "once in a generation" projects were successful due to the herculean efforts of several dozen committed individuals spanning multiple teams from UAF Facilities Services (Division of Design and Construction, HVAC, Alarms, Electrical, and Transportation groups), and the Office of Information Technology (Infrastructure and Cloud Services, Data Center Operations, Telecommunications Services, Enterprise Applications, Platform and Web Services, and Customer Support Services).  

 

External partners were also critical to the design, engineering, and successful execution of these projects include RSA Engineering, Amped Electrical, and Denali Mechanical - we could not have done it without them.  Their work ethic and commitment to see these projects through to completion within 12-15 hour days over the course of a week is truly commendable.