Under Construction…and Business NOT as Usual

In 2016 UNB opened our newly renovated Data Centre. This state-of-the-art facility was renovated to host IT services for not only UNB, but for several other institutions in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island through the Educational Computer Network consortium. The consortium is a joint initiative between NB and PEI public universities and colleges to share IT services among its members.

This renovation was undertaken while the centre was running all of our production services. One of the segments of our presentation will provide an overview of how we juggled our live services while the major construction was going on. 

The data centre renovation was also a continuation of our disaster recovery/business continuity project. We’ll discuss how we incorporated our secondary DR data centre into day to day operations—thereby actually operating a stretched data centre.

Participants will also get an overview of our new and enhanced services we now provide to the university community. We have virtualized most of our systems, which has greatly reduced our footprint in the centre. This has allowed room for our growth, as well as physical space for other external and internal clients. Lots of researchers and faculty want to be able to see and touch their servers, and not every end user is proficient with running their own network.  We’ll showcase our new service and support models, and introduce some of the new self-service options we’ve added to remove these barriers, while attracting new customers to move their systems to our centre.


Blair Sawler graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a Bachelor of Education, focusing on High School Business. He quickly merged his love of technology and education in the early 1990s designing computer based training for the Canadian Patrol Frigate program. Throughout his 25+ year career, Blair has worked with large IT consulting firms, School Districts, and also ran his own successful consulting business for several years. In the Spring of 2012, Blair joined the UNB ITS Department as Manager, Business Support Services. In 2013, Blair moved into the new role of Technical Operations Manager for the department. He manages the day to day systems, networks, and development teams in ITS. In his spare time, Blair stays involved in the community through Scouting, and is past President of the Sunrise Rotary Club. He is also actively involved in his son’s hockey program each year serving as Team Manager.  He and his wife Michelle have been married for over 25 years and have enjoyed many travel adventures with their two boys Parker and Spenser. They also love to spend time at home enjoying the outdoors, reading and walking their greyhound lab Jackson.

Dominick Labrie graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a Bachelor of Computer Science, with a Multimedia minor in 2015. Throughout his studies, Dominick has had interest in learning server environments and hosting services. With a friend, he created a free website hosting service that has been thriving since 2012 and keeps going. A few months after graduating, Dominick happily joined UNB ITS and has brought a fresh base of knowledge and interest. He is helping to develop alternatives to provide better hosting services and upgrade various systems, while doing the same in his free time to maintain his free hosting services.