MCC creates unique data center management program

Metropolitan Community College (MCC) of Omaha, Neb., is a comprehensive, full-service community college that offers affordable, quality education to the four-county service area of Dodge, Douglas, Sarpy and Washington counties. The College serves more than 49,000 students annually and offers both credit and noncredit options at eight locations throughout the service area, as well as online.

The U.S. Midwest is experiencing a boom in data center construction, with major global players such as Google and Yahoo! attracted by low taxes, high-energy security, low costs for land and power and excellent communications. Omaha sits at the intersection of both east-west and north-south fiber optic networks, making it a major target for investment. Both new and existing companies need a local IT workforce with the right skills.

Traditionally, data center skill-sets have been split into two streams: facilities operations (covering building infrastructure, electrical distribution and mechanical/cooling systems) and technical/IT operations (covering physical computing, storage and network equipment and cabling). These two streams are now rapidly converging, so employees of data centers will need similarly converged skills. The data centers of the future also face geographic recruitment issues, as they tend to be located outside of major conurbations for economic reasons. This immediately shrinks the potential pool of employees, making it all the harder to find enough people with the right skills.

Tom Pensabene, Dean of Information Technology and e-Learning at MCC, comments: “In recent years, we've seen a dramatic increase in demand for specialists who understand how to help companies reduce the costs associated with running a data center. Local businesses, chambers of commerce and IT professionals were all asking us to help close the skills gap in the local workforce, so we worked with IBM to see what was being done elsewhere. Surprisingly, we found that there were no programs specifically addressing data center management, and we embarked on our own project.”

Developing the program
To close the skills gap and meet the demand from Yahoo! and other businesses, MCC has developed a comprehensive data center management program that gives graduates all the skills they will need in the future. The degree program includes modules across data center design and location; hardware and disaster recovery; virtualization, remote access and monitoring; racks and cabling; physical and logical security; management of energy and cooling; and daily operations. The courses can be taken online, reflecting the growing trend for ‘lights-out’ data centers that are managed remotely.

In parallel with the academic side of the program, MCC is creating practical opportunities for its students through apprenticeships with external businesses. These apprenticeships also provide valuable information on how the required skill-sets are evolving, helping to ensure that MCC can adapt its courses over time.

“As we mapped out our plans for the new data center management degree program, we drew on the strong relationships we've developed through the IBM Academic Initiative with local employers and IT solution providers,” says Ted Tucker, Professor of Information Technology. “We also toured a number of data centers in the state to get ideas and understand the best practices for data center construction.”

“Yahoo! is focused on developing a new generation of data center operators who possess consolidated expertise in all required areas,” says Chuck Whitney, Data Center Infrastructure Manager at Yahoo! “We are partnering with local educational institutions in the areas where we operate our largest data centers to develop training programs that comprehensively build the required skills. With Nebraska being a core Yahoo! data center market, Metropolitan Community College of Omaha is a key partner in developing these efforts.”

Help from the Academic Initiative
MCC has worked for a number of years with the IBM Academic Initiative, Power Systems, taking advantage of discounted pricing for hardware and software, access to high-quality online tutorials and courseware and access to IBM conferences and workshops for faculty. The IBM Academic Initiative provided millions of dollars of IBM software at no cost to MCC for use in its education programs, in addition to royalty-free course content and materials.

“The IBM Academic Initiative is a really great program for us,” says Tucker. “It gives us access to powerful business software so that we can give our students hands-on experience while keeping the solution extremely economical. It also enables us to access royalty-free educational course content and materials, which made it faster and easier to build our new data center management program. With other vendors, we always have concerns about the potential future cost—even if we get a discount, we can't be sure it will still apply when we want to refresh the technology. With the Academic Initiative, the costs are hugely discounted, but they're also transparent, so we can plan for future refresh cycles with confidence.”

“With support from IBM and IBM Business Partners, we're constantly reviewing the course content so that it tracks the skills that are most in demand from employers,” says Pensabene. “Several local companies have provided experienced staff to teach specific sessions, and we also get lots of great ideas from the COMMON user group conferences and IBM Professional Development round-table events in Rochester. With add-ons like these, the IBM Academic Initiative, Power Systems, is a great support in terms of keeping our faculty current and our degree courses relevant.”

Hands-on experience
Knowing that practical, hands-on experience would be a valuable asset for graduates, MCC designed and constructed its own state-of-the-art data center at its Fremont location. The data center was funded through a three-year, $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, with the goal of increasing the number of students in IT education.

“We noted that many data centers are adopting blade servers for their compactness and efficiency,” says Pensabene. “By deploying IBM BladeCenter® servers based on IBM POWER processors, we were able to move our existing IBM i and IBM AIX® workloads to the blade form-factor.“

The Fremont data center includes an IBM BladeCenter S chassis with one JS12 Express server running IBM i, AIX and Red Hat Enterprise Linux in separate logical partitions. A second JS12 is housed at the Fort Omaha Campus, providing a disaster recovery option that is also used to teach students how to manage disaster recovery and backup sites.

Like the future data centers that MCC graduates will build and run, the Fremont data center includes both a server room and a ‘war’ room for planning and running disaster recovery scenarios and other exercises. It also has advanced security, with RFID-based access cards for the war room and retinal scanners for the machine room itself.

Building a brighter future for all
Working with IBM, other industry partners and local businesses, MCC has set in motion a program that will create the right skills in the right locations for employers. The College is addressing the most pressing economic needs in the local region, helping to meet the rising demand for appropriately skilled graduates.

“Our partnership in developing the next-generation data center operator isn't just about Yahoo!,” says Whitney. “We see strong value in making sure that people are well-equipped to work effectively in any modern data center. This is about working with the community colleges to create a baseline for the whole industry. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.”