Michael Aquino was born and raised in Kalihi from the island of Oahu. Michael graduated from Farrington High School. He now is currently pursuing a degree in Computing, Security, and Networking Technology from Honolulu Community College. He is one of the Officers of the HCC Hats Club and competes in Capture the Flag competitions regularly with the team. Recently he competed in the AFCEA and National Cyber League CTF competitions. He is excited about the Akamai Internship because he enjoys applying himself to new challenges. In his free time, Michael enjoys going to the beach, hiking and graphic design. He hopes one day to have a career as a network security analyst or cloud engineer.
Home Island: Oahu
High School: Farrington High School
Institution when accepted: Honolulu Community College
Akamai Project: Upgrading the GEN2 Observation Control System Network for Higher Network Speeds and a Failover System
Project Site: Subaru Telescope, Hilo HI
Mentor: Kiaina Schubert
Project Abstract:
The Subaru Telescope located in Hilo, Hawaii needed an upgrade on their GEN2 Network. The purpose of the project was to upgrade the network from 10 Gbps to 20 Gbps for faster connection speed. The project also provided a fail-over environment for the GEN2 observation system to prevent server interruption and data loss. With the telescope’s new instruments sending more data, higher network capabilities were necessary in order to avoid bottlenecking. For the upgrade, we implemented network switch replacement using high-speed switches, then used port aggregation and Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group (MLAG) protocols over multiple switches for the network upgrade. Link Aggregation Group (LAG) is a protocol which aggregates separate ports and combines them into one logical port, and MLAG is a type of LAG that provides redundancy in the event that one of the chassis fails. First, the switches were connected with MLAG. Next we made a topography of the network, then configured switches so that the data is routed from the MLAG-connected switches with aggregated ports that combined one port from each switch. Finally, we mounted the switches in the server rack, and we migrated equipment connections from the old switches to the new ones. With the network upgrade we implemented, we have increased network-speed capabilities and provided fail-over safety — in case a connection from one switch fails, the other switch will still send data. This project will be a great help to ensure data from the observatory will flow quickly and properly.