ITS Control Center stays prepared for student crises

What you see is a blank Web page. They see a red square and hear an insistent beep.

This is the Control Center, the core of all computer network activity on campus.

Student Central, Webmail, the unc.edu Web site and dozens of other programs are all monitored within that room in the Information Technology Services Manning building, which is staffed 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

“If a user can’t log on or send an e-mail, it’s a crisis,” junior network administrator Don Ward said.

The room looks like what you might expect from NASA. More than a dozen computer monitors ring the room, with four big-screens on the front wall filled with line graphs and video feeds.

And through a large window lies an 11,000-square-foot room housing the physical computer servers that serve the campus – rows upon rows of 6-foot-tall boxes that make up the heart of UNC’s computing.

And it’s the job of the 10 employees who work there to keep that heart beating.

“We make sure everything stays up and leaves little impact on students,” said Judd Knott, assistant vice chancellor for IT infrastructure and operations.

One of the main pages watched is the ITS Service Monitor, which lists 28 applications that the group is responsible for, including Blackboard and the programs listed above.

A green square means everything’s going fine. Yellow means the program is reaching a tipping point. Red means something’s wrong.

That will set off the pagers.

In response, the Control Center first follows a troubleshooting program to try to find the problem.

“I can’t say we have a common problem,” Knott said. “It changes.”

A center employee then calls the administrator in charge of the system in question to get them started on a solution.

The next call is to the response center, to warn them that they might be getting calls soon.

But fixing downed Web sites is not all the Control Center is responsible for.

Besides monitoring building temperatures and phone calls, the center also functions as a last line of defense in case of danger.

Cameras monitor the building’s security and radios can tune into Department of Public Safety communication lines.

And in a regional crisis, such as a natural disaster that wiped out all Internet connections, the Control Center could communicate with a special satellite uplink in the Midwest.

But mostly the center stays quiet.

During the day, the room is lit mostly by the computer monitors in the room. The only sounds are the tap of keyboards and the beeps of incoming problems.

“Students are given a pretty heavy weight,” Knott said. “That’s why we’re here.”

Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.