Colorado Christian University is located in Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Founded in 1914, CCU is the flagship Christian university in the Rocky Mountain region. A leader in higher education, the University is ranked in the top 2 percent of colleges nationwide for its core curriculum by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. CCU has had nine-consecutive years of enrollment growth and has been named one of the five fastest-growing universities by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Colorado Christian University’s CISO (Anna George) has been leading the charge to ensure network reliability and security across CCU’s network. A key part of this “hardening” effort was to enhance the infrastructure in their disaster recovery site located near the campus. Anna’s primary goal with this hardening effort was to provide the necessary redundancy to deliver the best customer experience possible. To help accomplish the infrastructure goal Anna reached out to DP Guardian for help in understanding options and to deliver a roadmap for this activity.
The IT demands placed on CCU’s DR site have increased dramatically over the years. “Expectations for an ‘always on’ experience have only increased over the years”, said Anna George. Anna continued, “our IT infrastructure is solid, but we need to evaluate and enhance the environments in which my equipment is housed”.
Environment is shared with other (non-IT) users and cabinets were not secured
Environment had airflow mixing and non-uniform airflow distribution creating hot spots and cold spots.
Network patch panel was outdated, and distribution was haphazard.
To help inform the challenge and a sensible solution set Anna reached out to DP Guardian. DP Guardian began their assessment by listening to Anna and her team as they shared their various concerns. DP Guardian then evaluated several solutions and put together the IDF hardening plan and delivered a full turnkey solution that addressed each of the needs that needed to be addressed.
DP Guardian delivered Panduit’s 30” wide locking cabinets with internal cable managers.
DP Guardian advised that A-B power be provided from separate sub panels. DP Guardian provided Zonit’s MicroATS units to provide A-B power to the single corded network devices. DP Guardian provided Geist’s (now Vertiv’s) fully manageable switched & metered A-B power strips to each cabinet.
DP Guardian rotated the new cabinets 180 degrees to ensure proper airflow circulation
DP Guardian provided new patch panels, planned and performed the network cutover inside of CCU’s tight maintenance window without incident and with zero delay.
