Navy details data center consolidation plan

The Navy's chief information officer has issued guidance elaborating on plans to halt all investment in new data centers and to consolidate operations in existing facilities.

In a July 20 memorandum publicly released Monday, Navy CIO Terry Halvorsen formally established a moratorium on investment in increased data storage capacity. To make exceptions, officials would have to first determine that existing space is insufficient and that it is not more cost-effective to expand an existing Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, Navy Marine Corps Intranet, or Marine Corps enterprise or regional data center.

The memo follows a January Navywide message from Vice Adm. David Dorsett, the deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, that barred spending on data centers, servers and server upgrades and called for development of a plan by September to reduce Navy storage facilities by 25 percent. Dorsett also said that plan should offer a way to increase server utilization by 40 percent or more.

The Navy data center consolidation is part of a governmentwide effort led by the White House to close 800 centers by 2015.

Halvorsen said in his memo that requests for additional data storage capacity will require approval by his office or the Marine Corps CIO. When searching for space in existing facilities, officials should first look to Navy-owned centers, then to those operated by other Defense Department organizations, and last to commercial data centers.

In a May blog post, Halvorsen said the Navy planned to initially "target mid-size data centers that provide services to an individual command or function." He added, "The initial consolidation targets will provide true cost savings due to reductions in physical plant, power and data center management contracts."

Steven Davis, a SPAWAR spokesman, said the command operates three data centers in San Diego; Charleston, S.C.; and New Orleans. Hewlett-Packard operates 10 classified server farms, 25 unclassified server farms and 32 microserver farms for NMCI, said HP spokesman Randy Dove.

The Marine Corps started building a massive 74,000-square foot enterprise data center in Kansas City, Mo., in 2010. Brig. Gen. Kevin Nally, director of command, control, communications and computers, told CHIPS, the Navy information technology magazine, that the Kansas City facility, due to open in July, is the "centerpiece of the Marine Corps data center service consolidation strategy" and it will have the capacity to host Navy applications.