Data Centre Community of Practice

During 2014, the Queensland Regional Network Organisation (QRNO) established a Data Centre Working Group.  Broadly speaking, the intent is to maintain a vibrant community-of-practice for professional development purposes, and also to progress collaborative initiatives to benefit QRNO members.  This THETA session will provide a focal point for the working group to engage among themselves and even wider with stakeholders outside Queensland.  The session should be of interest to anyone who has responsibility and interest in providing data centre services to the higher education and research sector.  The session will be facilitated to flexibly direct discussion to “hot” topics that emerge during discussion.  The session will be underpinned by providing an update on important issues and initiatives so far identified by the working group, that is:

• Consideration of residual current devices (RCDs) in data centres, balancing and managing the safety risks with the conflicting service risks resulting from nuisance RCD trips: an expert consultancy for the sector (UQ) and latest technology options (Griffith);
• CQ University’s disaster recovery experience before and after Cyclone Marcia;
• An initiative to periodically canvass the data centre co-lo market with particular reference to higher education/research sector issues;
• Data centre monitoring and efficiency initiatives.

Don Caruana¹, Laurence Rietberg², and Peter Vanheck³

¹University of Queensland, ²Griffith University and ³Central Queensland University