Planning a datacenter? Learn from Washington’s mistakes.
Summary: When you're spending the taxpayer's money, you should be more careful.
A few years back the state of Washington decided to leap onto the virtualization and consolidation bandwagon. Plans were made to move to a more virtualized computing environment, 40 some existing server facilities were slated to be consolidated, and a brand new 50,000 square foot datacenter was designed in as part of a new, $255 million, state office complex.
Fast forward a few years and the four data halls in the new datacenter remain unfinished. Only two of the 12,000 sq ft halls are ready for occupancy, and the State of Washington, which has decided they will need only a single hall, is deep into a search for customers willing to lease up to 30,000 sq ft of datacenter space that they find to be currently unnecessary.
This shouldn’t come as a shock to state lawmakers; almost two years ago a report from an external IT auditing firm came to the conclusion that if the state's consolidation, virtualization, and cloud computing plans came to fruition, the datacenter space requirement could be as little as 6000 sq ft. Just one half of one of the four data halls being built.
Understandably, the report was not well received. When it hit the news the official response from the state was that the datacenter wouldn’t fit the current needs of the state, if moved into a single facility, and that the process to move to the virtualized and cloud based services would take significant time.
The reality has proven otherwise, however. Consolidation has proceeded apace, with some 25 of the 40 existing facilities migrated, and the state now believes that they will need all of one data hall and possibly as much as half of a second when the consolidation is complete. Which is why they are looking for tenants for the large amount of unused space they find themselves saddled with.
The government IT department started talking about leasing potential unused space to third-parties when the story first broke in January 2011. Yet 18 months later the space sits unused and a broker is trying to find a tenant or two that can fill the space and, maybe not make the state look so foolish.
It’s not just that the facility was overbuilt in the first place, a decision process that should be thoroughly investigated, but that even with the foreknowledge that 60% of the datacenter space would be available for lease, nothing seems to have been done ahead of the opening of the facility to ensure that the space would simply not go to waste. Perhaps this should just be considered an excellent example of a project that was built with other people’s money and with no consequences if more was spent than should have been.
- Building datacenters of greener pastures
- Datacenter and workload migration: Lessons from the trenches
- Government caught exaggerating IT reform progress
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Talkback
Washington state has horrible management from their pathetic governor
Wow.
Not sure where youre going with this but it has nothing to do with the
The same indolent and incompetent sector that gave YOU the very same
I mean, if we're all supposed to blindly bow to the rich without any context or reasoning (e.g. ethics, or lack thereof, redistribution of wealth from worker to employer, etc...) then we should be blindly grateful to the government for our middle class (which includes you) as well. I'm game to change if you are...
The tea was spiked some time ago
And you're right - if they hate it here they can move. Given they don't mind taxpayers' money going to corporations that offshore jobs, they can move to the same countries and prosper at 50 cents per hour for all anyone can care anymore...
Why?
Would you trust a private company building a cloud for all?
I'm surprised you're so current on Washington politics
Huh?
If you mean "wages", then you ought to know that private and public sector wages have remained stagnant for some time, or have fallen, depending on industry...
You do understand that corporations lobby for preference, right down to taxpayer-funded handouts? Yet you only blame government... seems a trifle excessive in terms of myopic scapegoating...
If you want the ultimate fiscal mismanagement, and noting these had been voted along party lines, the increases to the debt ceiling between 2001 and 2006 should raise your ire, along with the spending that happened the most in the 1980s-2000s, while our own infrastructure was ignored. Have you looked at where today's spending is going, which includes the crumbling bridges and roads?
Here is the difference between government and private
When the government builds something, it just never seems to go away. Once built, there are too many reputations staked on the project and it no one seems to be willing to accept that its a failure and write it off.
Of course in business, you also see people with their reputations tied to projects but the difference is that sooner or later if it's a bad idea that isn't making money, it has to die. In government projects there is no such motivation to "turn it off".
This is all speaking as a long time federal and then state employee, so I'm not bashing government workers. In fact, it's not really the employees fault that bad management in government doesn't have the consequences that it should.
Let me get it straingt
Oh, external IT auditing firm said they'll need 6000 sq ft and now state estimates they need 18000 sq ft - good job external IT auditing firm?
The "fail" actually would be if they went with 6000 sq ft.
Because they knew more than a year ago
Only a government agency could consider this anything other than a failure in planning.
Well,
Did they? A lot happened in a year - storage got much denser (SAS and performance SATA drive capacity used in performance arrays got a lot bigger).
"they argued with their own consultant"
And for a good reason it seems - from 6k sq ft compared with 18k - what was that consultant smoking?
Now - i'm sure there is a lot of ass covering and finger pointing going on now; and of course this could've been planned better, but as far as a rule screwed up government projects go - this is a success: sh^$%t works from what i can tell from article - it just a lot more compact than anticipated.
Yes, a lot happened in a year
Who here who's has dealt with state governments
I can see one of two options. (Since the state is using part of the facility they will be involved no matter what.)
1. You lease out of hall and then get to deal with all the state rules and such whenever you want to move a wall, change the AC, bring in a new fiber drop, whatever.
2. An ISP/cloud operator leases out the space and deals wit the state. But they have the same issues. And man of those issues impact their customers' experience.
Which might explain why the halls are still empty. What fast moving operation wants to have to deal with internal government bureaucracies day to day?
In a nutshell
American government in action.
The money always comes from somewhere
You might want to verify that, since the person who coined that was Abraham Lincoln, a man who was not a communist...
Governemnts are full of tossers worldwide
The main reason they are hopeless, hapless, useless and incompetant, is the masters are dumb politicians - who need re-elected by whatever rhetoric and spin they can make the public buy.
Perhaps with the spare Datacenter capacity, they could co-locate another states Cloud Data center fallback/DR center, as I'm sure they have no off-site DR, as that would cost almost double and 'be a waste of money' - LOL.
Based on your ability to spell, you must run a city...
" built with other people’s money "
.
I'd bet that the real truth is that the consultant is correct but "they" cannot admit it so they cloud it with a "one data hall" estimate. In private industry, we'd be asking them where they got these figures.