University recognized as one of the nation’s most advanced campuses’

Rice wins Campus Technology award
University recognized as one of the nation’s most advanced campuses

BY JESSICA JOHNS POOL
Rice News Staff

Rice’s newly opened Data Center south of campus is just the most recent, most visible element in a holistic, three-year project led by Information Technology (IT) to create a technological foundation to support teaching, learning and research into the next decade.

Those efforts were acknowledged this week by Campus Technology when the magazine named Rice a Campus Technology Innovator. Rice was one of only 13 universities chosen for the 2007 award out of a pool of more than 330 nominees.

Titled “From Megabyte to Petabyte and Beyond: Future-ready Network at Rice University,” the project has included a major, simultaneous overhaul of academic, administrative and research cyber-infrastructure, said Kamran Khan, vice provost for information technology. “Reliability, security and quality of service were the big drivers for this project. With the new infrastructure, the possibilities are endless.”

Campus Technology noted that Rice is recognized as the first academic institution to use multiprotocol label-switching virtual private networks.

“When making our selections, we look for true innovation — projects that involve not only a solid technology implementation, but something more that really makes the school stand out,” said Rhea Kelly, managing editor of Campus Technology. “Rice is being recognized for its forward-looking networking project — its decision to forego traditional switched networking to leverage carrier class technology and create a high capacity, advanced virtualized network, which is allowing students, faculty and researchers to do some pretty amazing things on campus.”

Keeping a tight deadline

KAMRAN KHAN

IT began planning for this undertaking in 2004, then gathered input from faculty and students, and acquired funding in spring 2005. Contractors soon began installing 1,400 miles of copper wire in 63 buildings on an unusually quick timeline. Just one year later in spring 2006, IT was using itself as a guinea pig, testing its own migration to the new system.

That summer, residence halls were rewired, and by move-in week, IT had set up temporary help desks in each hall to help with the new network connections. Then, IT began systematically migrating faculty and staff to the new network.

With the official opening of the data center last week, the enormous project is almost complete. At 20,000 square feet, the data center offers plenty of room to grow for future computing needs. The state-of-the-art cooling systems and an elevation of 65 feet offer protection from Houston’s heat and floods.

“Considering the scope of this project, it’s amazing to see what we’ve accomplish in the past 18 months,” said William Deigaard, director of networking, telecommunications and data center operations.

The initiative dramatically improved several areas of campus life, reported IT in its award nomination, noting that the project:

• Significantly decreased the number of viruses
• Increased network stability and bandwidth
• Created economies of scale through consolidation to central servers and services for many departments
• Expanded researchers ability to solve data intensive problems
• Provided wireless access across the campus
• Reduced risk of data loss with enterprise storage, centralized firewalls and the new data center
• Provided redundancy between the new data center and Mudd building

“Improved gigabit connectivity allows our researchers to solve very large data-intensive problems and connections to national gigabyte networks,” said Khan. “This project gives Rice the backbone it needs to accomplish the goals outlined in the Vision for the Second Century and additional services for our faculty, students and staff.”

Rice’s information technology network serves 7,400 faculty, staff and students.