Customer Success Story
California Natural Resources Agency takes a sustainable approach
Water is precious, and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) works to sustainably manage the state’s water resources to benefit the people and protect, restore, and enhance the environment.
Overview
| Company | California Natural Resources Agency |
| Industry | Government and Non-Profit |
| Products used | AP43, Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance, QFX10008 and QFX10016, QFX5120, EX4300, MX204, Contrail Service Orchestration |
| Region | Americas |
Over $1Million
saved in network operating expenses in building a shared network infrastructure for its many Agency tenants
36
California Natural Resources Agency entities are supported by the new data center, which include 2500 business applications, 6000 servers, and 13 petabytes of data
80%
increase in data center network capacity
1
day to refresh IP fabric across data center and headquarters network
Build the digital roots for 36 natural resource agency entities
“DWR is the technical custodian of the connectivity and communications ecosystem for all the California Natural Resource Agency entities,” says Tim Garza, technology director, California Natural Resources Agency and CIO, California Department of Water Resources.
When DWR’s leadership set out to modernize the IT infrastructure to improve the staff experience and meet a new state mandate, they disrupted the status quo. “We left old-school government thought processes behind,” says Sarb Takhar, CTO of California Natural Resources Agency and CTO, California Department of Water Resources. “We looked at how we would design the data center and office networks as if we were a Fortune 500 corporation.”
A state mandate to enhance business resilience led to the creation of a new Level 3 data centers in Northern California. The data center move coincided with the development of a 20-story building in downtown Sacramento, which would be home to the Natural Resources Agency, Parks and Recreation, Fish and Wildlife, Water Resources, California Conservation Corps, and others. The networks for nine different organizations were consolidated into one.
These two massive projects were underway when the state issued strict stay-at-home orders to protect against the initial spread of COVID. The work, from design to production, was completed in 13 months.
AI-driven networking brings scale and agility
“We designed a new data center with greater capacity and capabilities, including AI, for today and the future,” says Jim Cooley, Senior Network Engineer at DWR, who was the lead architect for the data center and campus networks.
Business continuity is strengthened across the departments, conservancies, and other entities of the Natural Resources Agency. The data center and new headquarters use an IP network fabric, comprised of EVPN/VXLAN for the overlay network and Juniper QFX10000 Switches for the underlay network, to deliver greater performance, agility, and scalability.
“The data center and campus network design is one of the most innovative in state government, giving us both flexibility and optimization,” says Garza.
The user experience is transformed for the 4200 staff at the new Sacramento building and across the state of California. Juniper access points provide fast, reliable Wi-Fi, while Juniper EX Series Switches provide campus core and access switching.
“We can update the wireless in all of our Southern and Northern California offices in less than an hour,” says Cooley. “Previously, it would have taken us two or three weeks.”
Juniper cloud services also transformed campus network operations, with AI that automates key tasks and proactively addresses networking issues before they impact service levels. IT has detailed insight into user, device, traffic, and application behavior and traffic patterns. “Mist AI helps reduce our mean time to repair when tracing endpoint problems,” says Cooley.
The DWR team manages the enterprise network through the Mist portal, including seamless Wi-Fi management. Additionally, Juniper Contrail provides automated network orchestration and control over the Resources Agency data center fabric.
Sustainable IT outcomes align with agency’s mission
DWR sees sustainability advantages with Juniper networking, which aligns with the agency’s mission. The team reduced power consumption at its data center and other facilities, with AI knowing when to lower output.
“We have saved over $1 million in operational time and effort,” says Takhar. “We can prevent problems, and we have better capacity, capabilities, and sustainability of the components.”
The new building in Sacramento is zero net energy and LEED Platinum certified. “The way we engineered the network, it requires less power and our carbon footprint is lower,” says Cooley.
AI-driven operations deliver value in surprising ways. “One return on value that people don’t talk about is that AI operations helps us cultivate younger engineers as they are effective in a shorter time,” says Takhar.
The Products
AP43
The Juniper AP43 high-performance Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) access point integrates patented virtual Bluetooth® LE (vBLE) and Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to deliver an unprecedented user experiences.
Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance
Driven by Mist AI and machine learning, the Juniper Mist Wireless Assurance cloud service automates troubleshooting and operations, making wireless networks predictable, reliable, and measurable while providing near-real-time visibility into user service levels.
QFX10008 and QFX10016
QFX10008 and QFX10016 Switches support the most demanding data center, campus, and routing environments. With our custom silicon Q5 ASICs, deep buffers, and up to 96 Tbps throughput, these switches deliver flexibility and capacity for long-term investment protection.
QFX5120
The QFX5120 line offers 1/10/25/40/100GbE switches designed for data center, data center edge, data center interconnect and campus deployments with requirements for low-latency Layer 2/Layer 3 features and advanced EVPN-VXLAN capabilities.
EX4300
The EX4300 line of Ethernet switches are compact, fixed-configuration platforms that satisfy a variety of high-performance campus and data center access needs.
MX204
The SDN-enabled MX204 Universal Routing Platform provides a modular, automated, carrier-grade solution for service providers and enterprises. The compact platform brings 400 Gbps capacity and a full feature set to space and power constrained environments.
Contrail Service Orchestration
Orchestrates the entire service life cycle, from creation to delivery, in a modular and open framework.
Published September 2022