Fergie's Tech Blog

The FBI's Expanding Data Center

Wilson P. Dizard III writes on GCN.com:

Upgrading a data center is a big job under any circumstances, but managers at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division have a real challenge — overhauling a 100,000-square-foot data center while the facility continues to provide around-the-clock data services to police agencies, civil organizations and private companies.

The data center, part of a bucolic campus on almost 1,000 acres of hills and hollows near Clarksburg, W.Va., uses a fleet of mainframes and servers and thousands of miles of cabling. Its upgrade might be likened to replacing the engines of a jumbo jet while in flight, so careful planning and precise execution is essential.

The makeover, known as the realignment project, is designed to accommodate ever-increasing demands for processing and data storage driven partly by unfolding efforts to combat terrorism. Biometric services required by legislation that mandates background checks for teachers, bank employees and other workers are one source of the increased demand.

Thomas Bush, the bureau’s assistant director in charge of CJIS, said another of the most pressing new processing demands arises from work to mesh so-called flat fingerprint records held by the Homeland Security Department with rolled-fingerprint data.

posted by Fergie @ 7/08/2008 05:53:00 PM