I’m looking to make a career change, and I’m seriously looking into doing data center work. More specifically working as a critical facilities technician.

I’m just wondering if anyone here does this type of work and can give me some insight on the day-to-day operations, opinions of the work, etc.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Largefarva,

We're not large enough to have this type of specific role, and assuming you're not speaking of engineer level work like a SAN engineer, or Network engineer, or VMware etc.

A technician in that environment would probably be running fiber patches, installing equipment in racks and vice versa, cleaning fan filters. Probably tear down and rebuild of racks. Depending on power distribution used, it would change the way things are connected, in telecom, some centers are still powered with DC and use individual wire ups to fuse panels. In normal IT operations, it may be overhead bus bars, or just normal AC cables.

Not sure what the shifts look like at a job like that, nor pay, etc. Now that data centers are global, I'm wondering if midnight cutovers are a thing of the past. We do a lot of our high wire work in the day because we're a 24x7x365 core business, so better to have the maximum support available for problems.

Expect to be chilly a lot, and hot a little. Expect to lose performance in your hearing in the range of equipment fans.

Feel free to reach out if you ever have questions or want to talk through some questions. My email is in my profile.

If you are looking for a Data Center career you need to look at Ashburn, VA.
We are the Data Center Capital of the world.

Times Mirror

quote:

Originally posted by PowerBook:
If you are looking for a Data Center career you need to look at Ashburn, VA.
We are the Data Center Capital of the world.

Times Mirror

Recruiters call me all the time, especially for AWS.

Are you looking to relocate or are you looking at a specific center local to you?

I worked in that capacity when I was in my 20’s for a couple of years. Rogue covered a lot of what you’ll be doing already. I’ll just add that most of what we did was maintenance electrical in nature. Many times it was repetitive and boring, for me anyways. If you’re the type of person that needs a challenge now and then you’re likely to get bored with the work. The good thing about it was there was very little heavy lifting, work is steady and you’re out of the weather 99% of the time. The down sides are what I mentioned earlier, plus there’s a lot of documentation work at times and long hours (12 hour shifts are common).

All the data centers that I can think of off the top of my head in the Atlanta area need help in that field. QTS, Facebook, Google-(IDI), Amazon (which leases space from Google) and many others. I may actually go back to that field when I get a little older. I’d be doing it again now but I’d have to take a pay cut. Just have to see how I hold up.

I have worked in one for the last 20 years or so, but not in that exact role you mention.

Do you have any specific job descriptions that you are looking at? We have a "datacenter tech" guy, not even sure of his actual title but he does all of the wiring, running fiber, racking hardware, monitoring of A/C equipment, etc (but no actual server OS support work). We're spoiled with him there and I can't imagine him ever leaving.

I wish that relocation were an option but right now it’s simply not. I have to stick to the area between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Critical facility technicians don’t really work on servers and such (some might assist in certain roles) but rather maintain and operate all of the critical (and non-critical) systems at the data center, most notably the electrical distribution system as well as the data center cooling systems. Along with maintaining those systems, responding to abnormal conditions and taking corrective actions are all part of the job. Monitoring building alarms and fire suppression systems are all lumped into the same responsibilities as well.

I’ve heard that it can be stressful and then I’ve also heard that it’s some of the most boring work out there. So I’m just trying to get a feel for it before I make the plunge into the profession as a whole.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerBook:
If you are looking for a Data Center career you need to look at Ashburn, VA.
We are the Data Center Capital of the world.

Times Mirror

One of the proposed marketing names for Ashburn is "America's Cloud Capital." Every day I drive to work it's like a concrete corridor.

Be prepared for off hour shift work and weekends. Alot of customers won't let you touch any equipment during normal business hours unless it's a critsit.... Most Data centers have service personnel to maintain the actual equipment so your job will deal with peripheral stuff like fiber racking/unracking etc. Only time I've seen data center personal mess with equipment were military or secure site accounts.

Loudoun County Data Centers

This past year, they ran a 250K volt line to one data center on Route 50 near South Riding. One of the first data centers was MCI data center near Ashburn in the late 80's which was bought out around 2005 by Verizon.

The amount of fiber cable being laid around here is amazing. They continue to add more each year and I have to wonder how they keep from damaging the cable already laid.

https://biz.loudoun.gov/key-bu...ectors/data-centers/

At a Glance.

Up to 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic flows through Loudoun’s data centers each day.
Loudoun’s data centers are home to more than 3,000 technology companies housed within.
10.5 million square feet of data centers are currently operational with another 2.5 million square feet under development.
Available incentives include a 6 percent sales and use tax exemption on servers, generators, chillers and server-related equipment.

Connected.

Loudoun County’s “Data Center Alley” is the world’s largest concentration of data centers, with nearly ten million square feet currently in operation and another three million square feet being planned or developed.

More than 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic passes through Loudoun’s digital infrastructure, making us a key player in the world’s technology economy. Read more about data centers’ impact in the Data Center Study.
Fast and Easy.

Loudoun’s Fast-Track Commercial Incentive Program allows data center operators to get to market in record time. Our experience as a premier data center location provides and unparalleled level of confidence in the process. As one CEO recently said, “Projects here are completely proactive and collaborative in a way that gives you confidence in your investment.”
Power and the People.

Affordable and reliable power is vital to successful data center operations. The typical power rate paid by Loudoun data centers is 28 percent below the U.S. average. Loudoun also offers a best-in-class high-tech workforce that is well-educated and highly skilled. Over 60 percent of our workforce has a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Certified.

We’ve done the heavy lifting. Loudoun is ready for you. Are you ready for Loudoun?
..................


Verizon campus in Ashburn sold for more than $212.5 million
By Washington Business Journal | @WBJonline December 10, 2015 6:37 pm








The campus of Verizon, formerly the MCI corporate headquarters, in Ashburn, Virginia is seen Feb. 14, 2005. (Photo by Shaun...

Verizon’s massive Ashburn campus, the former home of MCI/Worldcom, has been sold to a joint venture for $212.5 million, according to information provided by the seller’s agent.

The 130-acre Loudoun County Parkway campus contains 1.9 million square feet of office and service uses in 12 buildings spanning more than a third of a mile. The buyer, a partnership of American Real Estate Partners and Davidson Kempner Capital Management, has agreed to lease the campus back to Verizon. The length of the leaseback is unknown.

In 2012, Verizon intern Andrew Glass posted a story on the company’s website about the campus, noting it processes services for customers nationwide, tests FiOS devices and maintains a large data center operation. At the time, Glass wrote, Verizon employed roughly 4,200 people there. In fiscal year 2015, according to Loudoun records, the number had dropped below 3,500.

Verizon acquired MCI in 2006, four years after the communications giant (then known as Worldcom) filed the largest bankruptcy case in U.S. history.
Rick Eckhard and Curtis Sano of Holland & Knight LLP represented Verizon in the campus sale

I started writing and well, got a bit wordy. I understand if TLR is the response.

I have been in IT for 40 years, infrastructure with a network focus the whole time. I have been in, around, through and designed data centers over the course of my career. I am ITIL and TOGAF certified so I have a bit of knowledge.

When I started in IT there was IBM, DEC, CDC, Sperry Rand, Burroughs, Cray and a few others. Each system was a world onto itself and didn't play well with the others.

Enter the corporate data center. A cold, noisy temple where those of us with technogeek powers prowled with punchcards, pocket protectors and green cards (not those, THE IBM GREEN CARD). You piss ants with PCs did not yet exist. Racking and stacking, cable pulling and connecting, power delivery were all critical roles. Floor loading, HVAC, service clearances and elevator capacity were all significant considerations. Printers the size a Cadillac were on the floor. System Operators sat in front of consoles straight out of Star Trek. Anyone in network was a special god since they could make the systems talk together. Life was good, I enjoyed being lord and master of the environment, if only for a couple of hours while I validated the latest patches or new configurations.

One nasty bit of reality, data centers are really expensive. What do corporations hate? Expense.

There are still corporate data centers, there will be for some time. There are fewer since it is more cost effective to locate corporate servers at a large hosting data center. Cloud computing is another solution whereby the corporation just "rents" capacity from the provider. FWIW, Cloud is not free, and it may not be less expensive, but it is a bright shiny object for many companies.

The many manufacturers? Most are gone or become "IT Consultants". Those that remain still have some unique characteristics but play well with each others (TCP/IP)> The business world is predominately Windows and Linux. IBM mainframe (zSeries) is still around but only because its expensive and disruptive to move to another platform. The concepts of DevOps, Agile, microservices and containers are changing the IT world again. The thinking is "Cattle Not Pets"

So where does that leave us?

System Operations - System operations is migrating from manual to automated (AIOps). The opportunity is not as a System Operator but as a System Operator that can automate processes.

IT Service Management - great opportunity here. If you can spell CMDB and actually build one that works, you will become a god.

Internal Data Center work (Rack and Stack, cabling, power, HVAC) - mostly contractor today. The opportunities are with those contractors. Those that are really good at this work will excel within the contractor ranks but be limited at the corporate data center.

Network Tech - good network techs are in limited supply but it takes some time to develop that experience and the certification process is challenging. Software Defined Networks (SDN) is the future, connect the physical plant once every 4 - 5 years then control everything else via software.

Help Desk - my advice? Look elsewhere. Between automation and outsourcing, this is a wasteland.

CyberSecurity - if you want an area that is growing and needs good, smart people, here it is.

Corporate Data Centers are an endangered species, not a lament, a fact. If you have a career horizon of 30 years a corporate data center may not be the best choice. Why build some of the most expensive buildings in the world when I can lease? There is work at Rackspace, Sungard, etc.. If you really want data center work, these will be around for a while.

Love em or hate em: If you have the chops, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others are the pinnacle of data center design and operation. Getting in is not an easy process.

quote:

Originally posted by Largefarva:
I wish that relocation were an option but right now it’s simply not. I have to stick to the area between Chicago and Milwaukee.

In case you go down this path, I know Walgreens has (or used to have) 2 data centers in the Chicago area. (Wags is not the first place you might think of, but they collect and manage huge amounts of data).

quote:

Originally posted by CoolRich59:

quote:

Originally posted by Largefarva:
I wish that relocation were an option but right now it’s simply not. I have to stick to the area between Chicago and Milwaukee.

In case you go down this path, I know Walgreens has (or used to have) 2 data centers in the Chicago area. (Wags is not the first place you might think of, but they collect and manage huge amounts of data).

Thanks for that heads-up. I just did a quick search and it looks like they sold the data center in Mount Prospect a couple years ago.


I also updated the title of the thread to be more specific. Seems like there’s a bit of misconception of what I’m looking at doing. I certainly wouldn’t mind doing some of the actual IT aspect but I don’t have any experience in that field yet. My previous experience that is directly related to this type of work was when I was a Nuke EM in the Navy. There’s a lot of similarities between the two. In fact, a lot of data center recruiters target nukes for this same reason.

If you want to stay in the Chicago area check out this website.

https://www.datacenterhawk.com/market/chicago

It shows the players in the Chicago market.

As things get more efficient I could see the big three players slowly killing the little guys.

I would check out if you can find Microsoft, Amazon or Google in the area, hiring for this kind of work.

Good luck in your search.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
If you want to stay in the Chicago area check out this website.

https://www.datacenterhawk.com/market/chicago

It shows the players in the Chicago market.

Equinix is one of those mentioned. I don't know how they are as an employer, but they were a not-ready-for-prime-time operation to deal with as a potential customer.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
If you want to stay in the Chicago area check out this website.

https://www.datacenterhawk.com/market/chicago

It shows the players in the Chicago market.

As things get more efficient I could see the big three players slowly killing the little guys.

I would check out if you can find Microsoft, Amazon or Google in the area, hiring for this kind of work.

Good luck in your search.

Thanks for that site! I wish I had known about that a couple months ago when I first started looking into the data centers in the area. I knew about most of them but there’s a couple/few that I didn’t know about yet. I’ll look into them to see if any have an opening right now.

Looks like a place I applied to on Tuesday morning wants me to meet with their site operations manager on Thursday next week at the client site that I applied at. This company has a few of their own data centers but it seems like a majority of their data center operations business are for other companies that hire them to maintain and operate their data centers.

quote:

Originally posted by CoolRich59:

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
If you want to stay in the Chicago area check out this website.

https://www.datacenterhawk.com/market/chicago

It shows the players in the Chicago market.

Equinix is one of those mentioned. I don't know how they are as an employer, but they were a not-ready-for-prime-time operation to deal with as a potential customer.

I’ve heard they treat their employees very well, with great benefits. At least for the location that I applied to back in November. They ended up filling the position internally, but when I hear about any openings with them I intend on applying again if I’m not already with another data center at the time.

I hope things work out and wish you the best.

There was another data center I dealt with, but the name escapes me right now. My recollection is they were based out of Australia - I remember because it was a challenge to schedule conf calls.

However, I was pretty impressed by them. If I think of their name I’ll post it here, or shoot you an e-mail.

I guess I never updated this post...I ended up getting the job and started towards the end of February.

A few weeks after I started there I got a call from the CFM (critical facilities manager) of another data center I applied to back in December, before I applied to my current employer.

At first I told him that I had just started somewhere and it wouldn’t be fair to my current company to consider anything right now. A few weeks pass by and I found out a couple of details I wasn’t aware of before....the contract my company has with the client is only good for three more years, and the client is looking to move to a new headquarters. I looked it up and sure enough, they are looking to move. Even if it’s in the same general area, if they move even 15 more minutes away it would put my commute to about an hour and a half. Three hours of commuting on top of 12 hour days wasn’t something I really cared to do if I could avoid it.

So I contacted the CFM from the other place....just to see what they had to say. Turns out the data center was still under construction and that’s why it took so long to get back with me. The pandemic also hit around the same time so it slowed construction down (was originally going to go live in June/July) so he told me that he would contact me again when it got further along.

Three weeks later he calls me back and asks if I could meet with him at the job site for a tour and talk a bit. So I said sure, and I’ll meet with him the following week.

Turns out it’s just him and the ACFM assigned there and commissioning is scheduled to start in June, and they were authorized to bring one more person onboard to assist with that process (and continued employment after going live of course) and with my background they really wanted to hire me. They said the list was really short...I was one of two candidates.

Well, last week I got the offer and accepted it. I start June 1st.

It’s a brand spanking new facility that is much bigger than where I’m at now. The building size is around 125k square feet, with the data hall at 70k square feet...but only half of it is going to go live right now. They’ll build out the rest of the data center in a year or so. The size of my current data center is approx. 5k square feet....so this is going to be much bigger. All modern and latest tech in the equipment there vice 20 year old technology of my current job. I’ll have the opportunity to actually work on and operate modern data center gear and equipment. I’m looking forward to it for sure.

To top it all off, I get over 50 more hours of PTO per year and once I go onto third shift I’ll get a 10% shift differential in pay which will amount to another 1k per month more than what I’m making now. They also have a couple of differ bonuses (profit sharing & performance based). So in the span of about 6 months I’ll be making about 25-30k more per year than what I started the year with.