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GCN Home > 06/16/08 issue

Virginia’s data centers pass a test

Newly consolidated centers return quickly in simulated disaster

By William Jackson

IN APRIL, the Virginia Information Technology Administration (VITA) conducted the first large-scale disaster recovery tests of the consolidated data centers that will house the state’s executive agencies’ IT infrastructure.

“That disaster recovery test proved to be much more successful than past tests,” said Fred Duball, director of VITA’s Service Management Organization. “We were able to do things quicker…and go further than we had in the past.”

Within the first 24 hours of the 72-hour test, all hardware in the recovery data center was up and running, and within 36 hours, 90 percent of the applications and infrastructure were running.

“We can’t bring it all up in 36 hours, but we don’t need to,” said Doug McVicar, a Northrop Grumman vice president and VITA program manager.

The goal is to identify critical systems and ensure that they can be restored with a minimum of lost time and data.

“The way we have the replication set up, we had a 30- minute data loss,” said Mike Elkins, Northrop Grumman’s director of data center transformation. In previous years, days of data would have been lost during recovery.

VITA is a program to consolidate the state’s IT assets and infrastructure into a centralized, standardized system to improve performance, security, reliability and efficiency. It was created in 2002, and the agency entered into a partnership with Northrop Grumman in 2006 to provide IT services.

“It’s more than just a contract,” McVicar said. The 10-year agreement calls for the company to build two new data centers for $60 million. The primary center is in Chesterfield County near Richmond, and the backup facility is in economically depressed Russell County. As part of the agreement, the company located the facilities in areas in need of economic development. In return, VITA opened the IT services contract to local agencies and school districts in addition to state agencies to maximize returns for the company.

During the first three years of the contract, the data centers and infrastructure are being modernized and agencies transitioned to the new facilities. The data centers are up and running with mainframe computers installed. New servers are being put in place, and a new network from Verizon links the state’s 2,000 agency offices. The centers have a workforce of about 1,000 employees. All were formerly state employees, and Northrop Grumman has hired 600 of them. All 85 executive branch agencies will be moved into the data centers during the next year.

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