Data Center Services

The following is a list of services offered by the Arlington Regional Data Center (ARDC). If departments are interested in any of these services or have additional questions please feel free to contact the ARDC staff at 469-284-7444 or send an email to ardc-help@utsystem.edu.

Co-Location

Customer provides infrastructure, racks, and network connectivity provider. ARDC provides two legs of power and fiber connection from demark to racks. No costs are currently charged to UT System campuses while System covers costs.

Physical Security Controls

Access to customer hardware is approved and edited only by said customer and its designated representatives. As well as ensuring physical security, a customer may grant access to a vendor or service provider, notify the ARDC team, and we will allow access and escort the guest for the duration of their service visit.

Smart Hands

The ARDC is staffed 24x7x365. Staff can provide reactive support for equipment located there. Customers provide processes they want followed and ARDC staff perform the tasks. Examples include power-cycling failed equipment, memory or drive replacement (hot swappable), component connections, failed cable replacements, etc.

Equipment Receiving and Secure Storage

Ship equipment destined for ARDC directly to the facility. We will receive the equipment from the carrier and place it in the secure storage area. All equipment is physically secured and ticket-tracked to record ownership and chain-of-custody.

Rack, Stack, and Cable

ARDC staff will follow directions or schematics to unbox, rack, and cable hardware to customers’ specifications.

Build Room

We provide customers with a sizeable staging area for infrastructure unboxing and initial burn-in. Solutions can be fully mocked-up in a more relaxed environment prior to relocation to the data center floor.

Inventory Reporting

ARDC inventories customer-owned equipment for our own purposes (e.g., capacity planning and physical security). We are happy to share reports for inventory reporting or provide ad hoc reports/pictures to meet inventory control requirements.

Customer Equipment Storage

Customers are provided with locking file cabinet storage for on-site storage of frequently needed supplies (e.g., cables, connectors, drives, memory, and other pieces-parts).

Network Operation Center (NOC) Monitoring

ARDC operates from “run books” that describe solutions we monitor and what actions the customer wants taken if there is a state change. If the customer can put a means of monitoring in place, we’ll monitor it 24X7 and take prescriptive action.

Health Checks

Some customers have found value in having a “script” followed by a staff member to ensure solutions and services are operational, often at a time well before normal business hours. We’re happy to work with customers to design such processes and document their implementation into operations.

On Site Work Area(s)

Best practice encourages us to minimize staff presence in the production data center area. Once tasks requiring such physical access are completed, we provide work space for staff to continue and complete work tasks via remote access methods. Staff may also finish out their workday on site to maximize productivity.

Conference Rooms/Training Space

If the ARDC is a convenient location, we offer our conference rooms and training room for customer use. Coordinate with the ARDC and we can accommodate groups up to 75 people. All rooms have hybrid meeting capabilities via Teams or Zoom.