35 Year Data Center Exit

After 35 years, the Utah Division of Technology Services has exited its 1987 primary data center. The building served a long, useful life. A couple of years ago, the Utah Legislature decided it was time for another Capitol Hill rebuild. The old State Office Building where I began my career with the state in 1989 was to be demolished and with it, the non-descript one story data center behind it. In 2009, shortly after the consolidation of all state IT into a single department, we moved all server operations from 38 different locations into that data center. Beyond that, we had a secondary data center located in Richfield to provide emergency services and business continuity operations for the state. With the consolidation, we also virtualized over 80% of the server farm, reducing the number of services substantially. Even though that move saved the state a lot of money, I think it actually helped delay many aspects of our cloud strategy which was published in that same year.

Back to today... the data center move is essentially complete. There are some servers to decommission, a few network connections to complete, and the final shutdown which will occur over the next few weeks. Over 900 servers were moved to the cloud during the last 10 months. Dan Frei, our CFO, and Mark Schultz did a tremendous job of mobilizing the whole operation. The whole thing was completed on-time and under budget. It had a tight deadline due to DFCM's target for demolishing the State Office Building. Capitol Hill will take on a new look. DTS has been operating out of the Taylorsville Office Building for over a year now and the remaining data operations are in a much smaller footprint here in this building.

At the same time as the data center exit, DTS has supported the moves of various state agencies to new locations, wiring and provisioning a new state prison, supporting thousands of remote workers who moved out of the office during the pandemic, the transition to a new administration and a new department, while maintaining support for thousands of employees, over 1600 information systems and a similar number of digital services, along with 100s of new projects. The teams have all done a great job: networking, hosting, cloud operations, devops, etc.

It's time for a new era. We will continue to build on this effort, with cloud-based applications, increased connectivity, and a remote work environment. Expect great things.