In 2013, the networking team began working on a complex set of requirements necessary to upgrade the nine-year old Rice network. Demands on the network are two fold: quantity and capacity. Every Rice faculty, staff, student and visitor now connects multiple personal and Rice-owned devices to the network. Each device (computer, phone, pad, tablet, and other types of computing equipment) processes much more data much more quickly than the computers and servers that connected to the Rice network in 2004.
Although the new network will not require re-cabling the campus, it will require changing the equipment and components attached to the network fiber. In order to meet an unexpected deadline for submitting requests for proposals, a physical inventory was required for the 300+ networking closets all across campus and in the outlying facilities. In just one week, a team of Data Center Operations staff completed this physical inventory, visiting and surveying up to 60 closets per day. Photographs and manual entries regarding the number of ports and switches each closet could manage were added to a database and linked to other information such as which departments and offices would be served through connections in each closet. Two of the operations staff, Edwin Martinez and Zach Pruitt, were responsible for the physical inventory. Back in the Data Center Operations Room, Christopher Ramirez transferred the photos and manually collected data into a database each night. Every morning, Sandy Rehm linked the new data to existing information about the connections as Martinez and Pruitt headed out to take inventory of more closets.
The networking and data center operations teams collaborated closely, to ensure that the appropriate data was collected and an accurate request for proposal could be distributed to vendors for quotes.