Agenda Item 2 – Frankie Jackson (Goose Creek CISD)

Network Operations Center Design Options and Disaster Recovery

Texas K-12 Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Council Fall Meeting – October 10, 2012

10:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.

Strategies for Designing a Network Operations Centerwith Operations for Disaster Recovery

1. How would you design it?

2. What would you include as core components?

3. Would you just move to the cloud? What are the considerations?

4. With a concept so complex, how do you sell it to management?

5. What are the options, successes, challenges, costs?

If you had to build a Network Operations Center today?

Goose Creek CISD’s Opportunity

Our technology facility is an old skating rink

We barely survived the last hurricaneBusiness Continuity and Disaster

Recovery is a PRIORITYA future Bond in 2013 is being

proposed

Goose Creek CISD’s Opportunity

The City needs a new technology facilityThere are conversations about

building a joint facility We are looking for best practices and

researching options

• Construct a TIER 2/3 Operations Center• Location outside of 500 year flood zone• Withstand a category 4 hurricane• Located near major thoroughfares • 24/7 Operations• Level 3 building security system• Emergency power• Redundant HVAC in critical areas• Offices for all technology staff

How Would We Design it?

Our Current Plan at this Time

CONSTRUCT a BUILDING

Issue a Request for Qualifications (RFQ)

? THERE IS MORE TO CONSIDER

Traditional Data Center Tier Structure

Traditional Disaster Recovery Tier Structures

Reconsider the Design

Consider Cloud Services Design Model

What Then Does the New Data Center Look Like?

They are new too.

How Much Internet Bandwidth is Needed?

Serious Considerations• Requires a constant Internet connection:

– Cloud computing is impossible if you cannot connect to the Internet.

– Since you use the Internet to connect to both your applications and documents, if you do not have an Internet connection you cannot access anything, even your own documents.

– A dead Internet connection means no work and in areas where Internet connections are few or inherently unreliable, this could be a deal-breaker.

Serious Considerations• Does not work well with low-speed connections:

– Similarly, a low-speed Internet connection, such as that found with dial-up services, makes cloud computing painful at best and often impossible.

– Web-based applications require a lot of bandwidth to download, as do large documents.

• Features might be limited:– This situation is bound to change, but today many web-

based applications simply are not as full-featured as their desktop-based applications.

• For example, you can do a lot more with Microsoft PowerPoint than with Google Presentation's web-based offering

Serious Considerations• Can be slow:

– Even with a fast connection, web-based applications can sometimes be slower than accessing a similar software program on your desktop PC.

– Everything about the program, from the interface to the current document, has to be sent back and forth from your computer to the computers in the cloud.

– If the cloud servers happen to be backed up at that moment, or if the Internet is having a slow day, you would not get the instantaneous access you might expect from desktop applications.

Serious Considerations• Stored data might not be secure:

– With cloud computing, all your data is stored on the cloud. • The questions is How secure is the cloud?

– Can unauthorised users gain access to your confidential data?

• Stored data can be lost:– Theoretically, data stored in the cloud is safe, replicated

across multiple machines. – But on the off chance that your data goes missing, you have

no physical or local backup. • Put simply, relying on the cloud puts you at risk if the cloud lets you

down.

How Do you Sell This Idea of a New Design?

• Management? • Community?• Your Staff?

?WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS,

SUCCESSES, CHALLENGES, COSTS?

Open discussion