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What Kind of Data Center Can You Build With $500M?
coondoggie writes "So, if the government gave your company $500 million to spend on building a new data center what would you buy and how would you build it? Well, the Social Security Administration is about to find out. As part of the stimulus bill, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the SSA got the tidy little sum to replace its National Computer Center. The SSA in fact says it will need closer to $800 million to fund a new IT infrastructure, including the new data center — the physical building, power and cooling infrastructure, IT hardware, and systems applications. (This is addition to a $72 million backup facility currently under construction in Durham, North Carolina)."
I will start with the assumption that this data center must be non-homogeneous. Get an assessment of all the projects that are using the current system you're going to replace (you know, the one with 36 million lines of COBOL code?). Because the number one priority of the customer (other projects) is going to be the lengthy transition from that to current technology. Prepare yourselves for this: Some of the projects aren't going to have any funding to do jackshit. Which means that the awesome spaghetti coded current system that's held together with COBOL duct tape needs to remain intact in some form. Not ideal situation but an uncomfortable truth. I'm thinking you would want to set aside 10% or $50 million or so for this (just throwing out a figure).
My work here is dung.
Could you approach Google and ask them to license their ideas on server and data 'pod' technology for your sharded databases? I'm not saying build the whole thing like this but with $500 million, you could probably have a large section to search and sharded databases that mimics Google. I don't think there's anything wrong with following the leader in that department. This probably isn't the best solution for relational databases so I would think another architecture would be in place for your MySQL and Postgres traditional database layouts. And that would be just huge centralized servers running virtualized instances of Linux with MySQL or Postgres.
My work here is dung.
Putting the operation in a location that is cost effective would make the taxpayers very happy. The DC area is too expensive. Maybe an old missile facility in Wyoming or the Dakotas.
This is a really really bad place to ask how to spend $500000000....
...but I'll bet you $500 million that: 1) It won't be nearly enough money; 2) It will be obsolete before it is finished; 3) It won't be finished before Social Security runs completely out of money (which will coincide nicely with my scheduled retirement); 4) [Fill in the blank]
or they could contract it out to google.
someone who knows how to manage large data centers correctly.
Dislaimer: I have worked for a contractor to the Air Force, and I have some insight as to government bidding, contracting, and results.
Well, if I were responsible for results, I would get requirements from staff, send out RFPs, hire the best people, manage the project, and deliver on time and on budget a state-of-the-art data center.
If I worked for the government, I would do the following:
- Find a company I would like to work for as a six-figure lobbyist, and hire them without regard to experience or practicality. I will have personal contacts with the CEO, and if I don't, I soon will.
- Get my "requirements" from that company, and have them provide the solution they specialize in without looking at my environment.
- I would not supervise them. I am too important for that.
- I would ask for more money as the project spirals out of control. The government would give it to me.
- The project would drag on for a decade, would never finish, and would ultimately get scrapped. I wouldn't care, because I now work for the vendor, lobbying the government for more projects. I get my own private limo and driver, and I don't have to declare it on my taxes, unless I want a very visible government job again.
Someone might raise a fuss in the public about this, but all that proves is that the government need more money to fix it.
P.S. The contractor I worked for beat out a lower-bidding, "women-owned", "development-zoned", and much more local company. By any government calculus, the local company should have won the bid hands-down. But there were, shall we say, non-written reasons the local company lost and the gigantic out-of-state, double-the-bid, next door to DC company won.
Because they're not in my Congressional district?