Services > Facilities

Our facilities include secure data center and collaborative meeting spaces

CRAB’s office suite includes a secure data center and efficient work and meeting spaces well-suited to collaboration and training. Our suite is located on the 7th floor of an office building adjacent to the research and downtown cores of Seattle. The space is organized such that our teams work together in a variety of meeting rooms and collaborative spaces, including graphic and audio/visual studios and scanning stations to facilitate our work.

CRAB’s technology data center houses state-of-the-art equipment that provides secure and reliable services to our organization and clients. Our systems feature fault tolerance for all critical services to maintain high availability of data and applications. Applications and services are provided on Windows-based servers, a majority of which are deployed in an efficient virtual environment to better utilize hardware resources and to enhance disaster recovery and business continuity. Additionally a co-location site provides recovery of key systems in the event of a catastrophic disaster of CRAB’s primary data center.

The CRAB network features a ten gigabit Ethernet backbone. Network equipment includes enterprise switches, routers, clustered high availability firewalls and secure remote access featuring two-factor authentication. Data generated through various shared resources is stored across a variety of systems including an enterprise storage area network (SAN). The total data storage resources of CRAB exceed 60 terabytes. Research data and servers are backed up to tape utilizing high-speed tape libraries and fault-tolerant RAID arrays and tapes are secured in an off-site facility.

CRAB’s computer systems host electronic data capture applications that include electronic case report forms and associated services. The data center also supports secure transfer and storage of medical images and high dimensional data. Other applications and services provided in the data center support statistical analyses of clinical and genomics research data.

The data center includes a self-contained independent Liebert cooling system with environmental climate controls. Cooling redundancy is provided by separate compressors linked to the building’s cooling system. Physical security includes video camera surveillance and card-key access.

Power conditioning and battery backup is provided by a Liebert uninterruptible power source (UPS) system. The UPS maintains consistent power levels and protects equipment in the event of a power surge. DC battery banks are constantly charged and can provide more than one hour of uninterrupted operation during short outages and safe shutdown in the event of an emergency.

We have several multipurpose meeting rooms equipped with LCD monitors and presentation laptops. Our largest meeting room includes a ceiling-mounted projector, large projection screen, and in-dwelling audio microphones. In a classroom configuration, this space holds up to 10 students plus individual workstations for computer-based instruction. Our collaborators often prefer this classroom to on-site training. We also provide web-based instruction effective for small groups.