The University of Texas at San Antonio The Office of Information Technology

Network Upgrade Overview

Why is the upgrade needed?Obsolescence

EOS/EOL - The current core switches in use on the UTSA campus are scheduled to become End of Sale (EOS)/End of Life (EOL) in 2012. After this date, there will be no support or service available for these switches.

Speed Gigabit to the desktop - The current network does not allow for the delivery of Gigabit

Ethernet speeds to the desktop. The current network backbone is limited to 1 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) and cannot support connections faster than 100 Megabits per second (Mb/s) to users. Gigabit speeds are increasingly becoming necessary for the support of UTSA research initiatives.

Reliability Redundancy - While the main switches in each campus building utilize redundant

hardware and power to provide increased reliability, there is a lack of redundancy in the connections between the switches in each building.

Power - The battery backup systems in place in several network closets are old and experiencing battery failures. This problem, coupled with unpredictable power issues throughout campus can result in occasional connectivity issues.

Vendor Evaluations Criteria

A listing of the technical requirements was sent to each of the vendors and each was asked to propose a solution which met the technical requirements. A series of meetings was held with each vendor to ensure each vendor properly understood the requirements and to clarify any design questions or issues.

A scoring matrix was developed to analyze each vendor’s proposed solution. The scoringwas performed by three technical staff and one manager.

The following criteria were used in the analysis: Features and Performance Support and maintenance coverage Management capabilities Pricing Vendor ability/capability to deliver proposed solution

Vendor Pros and Cons• Cisco

– Pros• Incumbent vendor, market leader

– Cons• Technology offering did not offer capabilities equivalent to that of competing vendors, history of support issues, aging

technology. Proposed solution was weak and utilized inferior product offerings.– Total Project Cost $5.1 Million

• Foundry– Pros

• Progressive and current technology, successful implementations of proposed solution in other university environments, cost, discounted pricing in proposed solution viable beyond three years

– Cons• Smaller market share

– Total Project Cost $4.34 Million

• Juniper– Pros

• Progressive and current technology, innovative feature set– Cons

• Limited deployment of proposed solution in higher education environments, proposed hardware was not a good fit for enterprise usage, discounted pricing offered in proposed solution was not viable beyond three years

– Total Project Cost $5.05 Million

Proposed Vendor

Foundry Networks providesIncreased Reliability

Flexibility – proposed solution will provide greater flexibility to meet the demands of a growing and research intensive university.

Redundancy - The proposed network upgrade will provide multiple connection points to each campus building main switch to facilitate greater reliability.

Increased Speed Capability to provide Gigabit speeds to the desktop - While the default connectivity provided to end

users will remain at 100 Mb/s, the upgrade will provide a 10 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) backbone connection to each building. This increased backbone bandwidth will provide the capability to support up to 1 Gb/s to the desktop where required for research or other needs.

Reference checks University of California Davis University of Utah Medical Center Microsoft (Customer Research Labs)

Year 1 Spending PlanPhase I

Purchase date February 09• Campus firewall -$175,000• JPL aggregation core switch 1 -$103,925• JPL network core switch -$298,177• Infrastructure and connectivity -$25,000• Year 1 contingency -$50,000

Phase IIPurchase date March 09

• JPL aggregation core switch 2 -$94,196• JPL aggregation core switch 3 -$103,925• JPL server core switch 1 -$148,304• JPL server core switch 1 -$148,046• Infrastructure and connectivity -$45,000

Phase III• Purchase date July 09• SB network core switch -$258,912• Infrastructure and connectivity -$30,000

Year 1 Work Plan

Phase I - Design and coordination• February – May 09 Campus network design• March – April 09 Departmental communications and coordination• April – June 09 Network design testing

Phase II - Deployment• *June 09 Campus firewall and (3) JPL aggregation switches deployment• *July - August 09 JPL server switches deployment

Phase III - Deployment

• September - October 09 JPL Core switch deployment• October - November 09 SB Core switch deployment• December 09 Year 1 completed

*Dates may vary dependent upon maintenance window approval