Two Decades of Data Center Management

Summary

Comprised of over twenty multi-site research teams, our client is a funding agency and collaborator on projects in cancer surveillance and policy support. Their important work depends in part on their ability to collect, protect, organize, and access disparate data. To help facilitate that, CNSW built and maintains a knowledge management system (KMS) containing meeting logs, presentations, past discussion notes, decisions, and project tracking, and we host the KMS at our data center along with several other CSNW-built, mission-critical applications for this client.

Goal

Our client’s work demonstrably improves the health of global citizens. It is imperative that researchers consistently have the data they need at their fingertips and that previous work is not lost over the span of multiple funding cycles. In support of their mission to help all people live longer, healthier lives, we work to provide extensive logistical and technical support, application development, decision support tools, and as this case study outlines: data center management.

Work Performed

To keep their focus on research rather than the details of infrastructure management, our client opted for our comprehensive managed data center service, encompassing all hosting and technical support necessary for the functioning of the consortium’s shared infrastructure. In addition to the obvious—housing and protecting their data at our data centers—this also includes internet connections, hardware, software licenses, security certificates, security patches, backups, new user accounts, and monitoring for the KMS and related applications. All web-hosting infrastructure is implemented using the client’s own and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards.

Results

As our client’s managed data center service provider, the resources we’ve provisioned and maintained include:

1. Virtualized server environment with local and remote redundancy
2. Continuously-replicated offsite warm-backup web-servers
3. Data archival complying with client’s data retention policies
4. Cross data center active-active infrastructure
5. All regular patching and testing for operating systems and related infrastructure
6. Security Assessment and ATO documentation

The end result is a reliable resource for our client that has supported their work and the work of their funded research teams for almost two decades.