HomeMy WebLinkAbout13.F.2. Purchase of a Storage Area Network (SAN)
13. .F:J,.
City of Shakopee
Memorandum
TO: Mayor & City Council
Mark McNeill, City Administrator
FROM: Carrie Duckett, Information Technology Coordinator
SUBJECT: Storage Area Network (SAN) Purchase
DATE: June 9, 2006
Introduction
The Council is asked to authorize the purchase ofa Storage Area Network (SAN) for the City's
IT department.
Background
The City of Shako pee is facing data growth challenges.,Additional.computer\serverequipment is
needed to support,both new applications and increasing data storage requirements. The cost of
managing many servers, each with their own attached storage, makes it difficult and time
consuming to react to necessary changes. Some of the storage-related challenges we are facing
include:
. Document imaging is becoming increasingly high demand for each City department
which will require additional storage capacity.
. New projects are coming on line - increased storage is anticipated.
. Downtime is required to perform serverpatching, hardware upgrades, and system
expansion activities.
. Applications are not easy to bring online due to a restricted test environment.
. Data growth between key systems is occurring unevenly. Excess capacity is available in
some systems, while others are consuming capacity at a much higher rate.
Recognizing the need to accommodate the growth and replacement of the City's network
resources, staffhas been exploring new server technology and has found a Storage Area Network
(SAN) to be an excellent solution. A SAN is a high-speed system that connects multiple servers
to a centralized pool of disk storage space. Staff has determined that a SAN will add strong
functionality to our storage infrastructure which will enable us to respond with the ever-changing
storage demands. By treating the City's storage as a centralized resource) a SAN offers the
following benefits:
. Significantly less downtime than under our current system
. Quickly recover data
. Disaster recovery
. Growth and expansion easily accommodated
. Easy to schedule and control disk maintenance and routine backups
. Management of a centralized pool of disk storage space
. Testing and deployment -Create storage capacity to test new applications, operating
, system upgrades, or modifications to existing applications.
. Storage Cluster is fully redundant
. Capability to utilize ALL disk storage space when needed
. Ability to adda.dditional capacity and performance as needed
. Rapid recovery
. Boot from SAN capabilities - the City will have the ability to recover from issues such as
server failures in minutes rather then hours or days
After extensive research, staff has found that the SAN made by Xiotech will be the best solution
for the City. Their product is scalable to meet the City's growing needs in the future and comes
with a reasonably priced maintenance agreement. Another ofXiotech's major advantages is
their customer training and support and the fact that their customer support center and corporate
headquarters are based in Eden Prairie. Xiotechis listed on the State Contract and their product
is currently used by the cities of Bloomington, Albert Lea, and St. Cloud.
Budget Impact
The cost of the SAN is $58)936.03. This includes all hardware, management software,
installation, training) and the first year's hardware/software maintenance agreement. Several
funding sources are proposed to be combined to generate this amount:
~ $10,000 would come from the R&D line of the Telecommunications Fund budget. The
Telecommunications Advisory Committee has recommended allocating these funds for
this purchase.
~ $15,000 would come from unspent funds in the City Clerk's 2005 budget for the
document imaging project. This money was allocated for purchase of a server to house
the document imaging system, which we have been able to defer up until now by
temporarily housing it on the City's domain control server.
~ $33,936.03 would come from unspent funds in the 2005 IT budget.
The $48,936.03 in funds originally budgeted for 2005 but unspent is currently in the General
Fund Fund Balance. In order to utilize them for this purchase) a follow up budget amendment
resolution to increase the 2006 IT budget is needed.
Relationship to Vision
Purchase of a SAN will help meet the City's data storage needs and reduce down time in our IT
systems, thereby contributing to a vibrant, resilient and stable City.
Requested Action I
The Council is asked to authorize the use of $48,940 from the General Fund Fund Balance and
authorize appropriate city staffto purchase a Xiotech SAN for an amount not to exceed $59,000.