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Aaron Tarbet Hust removing servers and cables from the old data center.
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Boxed servers and IT appliances ready to be moved by Ydel Espiritu (left) and Jeremy Nagahama (right).
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Detached Server Faceplates.
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Topher Schlund preparing for the data center move at DRFortress.
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Maneuvering a 75-pound server (clockwise from left to right) - Ydel Espiritu, Jeremy Nagahama, Kornel Osztrovics, Topher Schlund, and Tyler Atiburcio (back to camera).
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James Barnes on call with DRFortress tech support to bring up the Aloha Tower WAN circuit, and connect Aloha Tower back to the data center.
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Networking team going over technical summaries of the day with DRFortress tech support (from left) - James Barnes, Aaron Tarbet Hust, and Ryan Montgomery.
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Making progress (from down up) - Topher Schlund, Tabitha Hutchings, James Barnes, and Ryan Montgomery.
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Topher Schlund unpacking server cables.
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Kornel Peter Osztrovics organizing server cables.
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Data center move to DRFortress successfully completed.
Departure from Previous Data Center Timelapse.
Hawai'i Pacific Å·ÃÀAƬ's (HPU) Information Technology Services (ITS) department has moved its entire technology platform to DRFortress, a datacenter facility located in the Airport Industrial Park in Honolulu. The new datacenter is a 65,000 square foot facility, specializing in power, cooling, fire detection, security, connectivity, and customer support. This move positions HPU with access to services to allow stability, growth, and improvement of IT services for the university.
The move took place between March 9th through the 12th and involved ITS Network and Security, Infrastructure, Enterprise Applications, and Client Services under the project management of AHEAD professional services. Planning for such an enormous endeavor began in March 2022.
DRFortress Data Center Move Timelapse.
- Why the move?
HPU’s technology platform is ever growing to meet the demands of its user community. Moving to DRFortress provided the power and space to properly deploy two five-node Nutanix blocks for Server and VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), Aruba networking appliances, and telephone appliances.
- Timeline
Beginning February 16, through March 9, 2023, ITS sent a series of email communications to the HPU community to prepare them for the move and to provide timely updates on applications and services which would not be available during that time. ITS staff worked closely with AHEAD’s project manager, Kylee Piccirillo, in weekly team meetings. Tasks were assigned to key players, challenges were pre-empted, and action items were reviewed and checked off to ensure a seamless transition. Securing transportation, making sure the vehicles were road-worthy to haul equipment between locations, and that ITS staff had sufficient access to HPU campuses, was integral to a successful move.
Beginning the week of March 6, ITS completed pre-move activities such as shutting down unnecessary resources and staging and testing new network environments. From Thursday, March 9 going into Friday, March 10, ITS completely shut down all on premise services and resources and moved physical hardware from the previous vendor to DRFortress. Services were restored on Sunday, March 12. ITS staff continued to monitor the situation over the next few days in order to resolve intermittent outages.
Photos and videos by Andrea Leung
