Become A Jaguar 
Request Info 
Apply
SAN ANTONIO (November 9, 2017) — Texas A&M University System institutions located near the Gulf Coast can rest easier about the safety of their data and the functionality of their information technology systems should another storm like Hurricane Harvey make landfall. On Thursday, System officials announced the launch of the South Texas Data Center, which will efficiently enhance System operations while providing a safe location for data storage.
Located far from the coast on the campus of Texas A&M University-San Antonio, the data center services all of the System’s academic institutions in the region, including Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and Texas A&M International University in Laredo.
“This is a great example of the benefits to a university of being in a system,” said A&M System Chancellor John Sharp. “By pooling System resources, we are able to provide necessary technology and services to multiple universities in a way that both saves money and offers better services from a safer location than these institutions can provide individually.”
Texas A&M System Chief Information Officer Mark Stone said this center has been in the works since early 2016. Knowing that the System wanted to consolidate data center operations into a single South Texas location, the CIOs of the participating universities banded together and proposed a software-defined data center solution.
“This solution allowed the institutions to immediately leverage existing data center assets and to jointly share all future compute and storage purchases,” said Stone. “This virtual data center enables each institution to have better tools and greater capacity while taking advantage of each institution’s unique strengths.”
The South Texas Data Center is a virtual and distributed data center model. It is part of a larger effort on the part of the four South Texas universities to strategically place infrastructure and network capabilities to ensure operations and reduce downtime in the event of natural disaster.
“This effort started as a way to host disaster recovery systems for other Texas A&M universities,” said A&M-San Antonio’s Interim Chief Information Officer Steve Erwin. “Through collaborative efforts with the other four universities, this data center is not only able to host, but also able to reduce costs by centrally locating computer, storage and sharing resources to maintain the equipment.”
###
About Texas A&M University-San Antonio
With a nearly 700-acre Main Campus to expand into, the Military Embracing™ university welcomed its inaugural class freshmen class in August 2016 and is now a comprehensive four-year university. Currently enrolling approximately 6,500 students, Texas A&M University-San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing universities in the state. To learn more, visit tamusa.edu