Cook County Bureau of Technology IT Network Upgrade

Level-1 resolved VLAN issues for Cook County BOT, restoring network performance and resilience across its enterprise IT systems.

As the second-largest county in the United States, Cook County depends on a robust and resilient digital infrastructure to support over 40% of Illinois’ population. The Cook County Bureau of Technology (BOT) oversees this vast network, managing centralized enterprise technology services for all county agencies, including wide area networks, telecommunications, data centers, and IT procurement. 

When persistent communication issues arose between load balancers and virtual servers within BOT’s Dell-based virtual environment, the County turned to Level-1 Global Solutions alongside the Dell team to diagnose and resolve the underlying network fault. The problem stemmed from inconsistent VLAN tagging, which was disrupting communication between key virtual machines and affecting broader system performance. 

We conducted a comprehensive assessment of BOT’s operating system and hardware environment, including switch configurations on MXL modules for stacking, storage, and LAN connectivity. We also reviewed chassis and blade configurations to pinpoint where VLAN traffic was being dropped or misrouted. 

Our engineers then developed and tested a precise solution that extended the VLAN through to the MXL switches, ensuring that traffic was properly tagged in both directions and communication was re-established from the switch layer to the virtual servers. 

What We Delivered 

• Full diagnostic assessment of VLAN routing issues across BOT’s virtual infrastructure 
• Configuration review of Dell MXL switches, chassis, and blade systems 
• Identification of misconfigurations disrupting load balancer-server communication 
• Implementation of a tested solution to extend VLAN traffic tagging through switch layers 
• Restoration of critical data flow between network devices and virtual environments 
• Enhanced system resilience and improved performance across the County’s enterprise network 

By restoring seamless VLAN communication within Cook County’s core IT infrastructure, Level-1 helped re-establish performance, stability, and interoperability in a virtual environment critical to day to day government operations. Our targeted intervention enabled BOT to continue serving agencies and residents across the region with greater digital continuity and confidence.