Assistant Secretary of Defense (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence) and DoD Chief Information Officer Arthur L. Money today hosted a ceremony opening the first consolidated server room in the Pentagon.
Located in the Pentagon's newly renovated Wedge 1, this computer facility is the first of 16 server rooms planned for the building. In the future all Pentagon organizations will be supported by central computer sites; the site opened today will house Army and Navy tenants.
"This facility commemorates a major milestone in DoD's march to improve the efficiency, reliability and security of information technology assets," said Money in cutting the ribbon for the new facility. "It is a visible example of our IT reform efforts by consolidating facilities previously scattered throughout the building."
Each new server room will offer modern enhancements for greater security and reliability. Among these features are smart uninterruptible power supplies, fire protection, cabling via overhead or raised flooring, redundant heat, ventilation and cooling, common work and test bed areas, multi-media storage cabinets, and lockable server racks. Supporting both classified and unclassified needs, these facilities will create savings by relocating 70 scattered server locations currently in the Pentagon into 16 sites.
Development of consolidated server rooms dates from a June 1999 deputy secretary of Defense memo. This guidance established the consolidation requirement and stipulated that tenants would govern these sites.
The resulting Consolidated Computer Facilities Working Group was established in August 1999 to handle tenant needs and operational procedures. This group pioneered a cooperative approach to shared facilities. Among its "firsts" are joint design requirements and a handbook on how tenants will operate "side-by-side" in the computer server rooms. In conjunction with service providers for telecommunications network connectivity and facilities management, the group also drafted service-level agreements for tenants to execute with service providers before occupying the common service rooms.
Led by Money, the DoD chief information officer, the working group includes representatives from the office of the Secretary of Defense and its Washington Headquarters Service, the military Services, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the project manager for Information Management and Telecommunications-Pentagon Renovation, the Network Infrastructure Services Agency-Pentagon, and key elements of the Pentagon Renovation program.
Completion of the planned information technology renovation in the Pentagon building is expected by November 2015.
