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Tennessee South Service Center

  • 1 Tennessee South Service Center
    In an ever changing world, IT disaster recovery has become a vital part of every IT director's duties. Planning for natural disaster or the unthinkable man-made disaster has become increasingly critical for the smooth operation of state and local government.
  • 2 Structure
    In the wake of many recent natural and manmade disasters such as 9/11, safety and security of data systems has become a top priority. The State of Tennessee's Data Center South was purpose built to include these structural features: Designed to withstand F3 tornadoes and moderate earthquakes and physical barriers such as a perimeter fence.
  • 3 Security
    In addition to structural considerations, the State of Tennessee's Data Center South was purpose built to include these security features: Card access and iris scanners, 24 x 7 x 365 monitored video surveillance and on-site security officers.
  • 4 Infrastructure
    Data Center South provides a separate caged area with lockable 7-ft server cabinets. The cabling plant consists of a 3-tiered, overhead cable tray system, providing both fiber and copper cabling. Cabinets are preconfigured with A-side and B-side network and power to provide maximum flexibility and eliminate any single points of failure.
  • 5 Cooling and Equipment Yard
    Data Center South provides high availability at Tier-III levels and is maintainable while operating, without requiring maintenance windows to repair, replace or maintain the critical mechanical and electrical systems. The power and cooling systems are designed to support high density computing with 2N and N+1 redundancy features.
  • 6 The Command Center
    Leveraging the State's relationship with AT&T, we can provide fast and reliable access to either the Internet or the State's NetTN network. Fiber entering the building from diverse locations ensures high availability and greater redundancy.
Photography by Brian Robbins

Tennessee South Service Center received its Certificate of Occupancy (CO) exactly one year ago. Much of the Enterprise infrastructure was fully implemented by early this year, including the new network design, SAN storage, firewalls, VM farms, file servers, backup servers and shared environments. The Enterprise Command Center has been fully operational in the new facility since November of last year.

In addition to the ongoing migrations of systems from DC North to DC South, hardware refresh cycles are presenting opportunities for relocating applications to the new data center. Having two geographically distributed centers provides additional disaster recovery options for many of the State's mission critical applications, as well as allowing OIR to develop a range of cost effective DR offerings for State agencies. As dependency on this new fully redundant Tier III data center continues to increase, so does the reliability and high availability of the State's IT Infrastructure.


About OIR

Photo of Mark Bengel, CIO

Mark Bengel Chief Information Officer

The Office for Information Resources (OIR) provides direction, planning, resources, execution and coordination in managing the information systems needs of the State of Tennessee.

OIR is a division within the Department of Finance & Administration (F&A), guided by Mr. Mark Bengel, Chief Information Officer. OIR's clients primarily consist of State agencies, departments and commissions.

OIR serves as staff to the Information Systems Council (ISC), and under the ISC's guidance, provides technical direction, services, and infrastructure to the State of Tennessee.

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