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HomeMy WebLinkAbout07/25/06 Technologies MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE TECHNOLOGIES BOARD HELD ON July 25, 2006 I The Regular Session of the TECHNOLOGIES BOARD of The Colony, Texas was called to order at 6:29 pm on the 25th of July, 2006 at CITY HALL, in the City Manager's Conference Room, City Hall, 6800 MAIN STREET, THE COLONY, TEXAS, with the following Technologies Board members present: John Marshall TeRon Lawrence John Harton Jack Turner With 4 out of seven members present a quorum was established and the following items were discussed. 11.0 I Call Meeting to Order: 6:29 P.M. I 2.0 I DISPOSITION OF MINUTES Acceptance of Technologies Board Minutes for a meeting held on May 9, 2006. I 3.0 I CITIZEN INPUT I None I 4.0 I AGENDA ITEMS 4.1 Discuss and recommend approving acquisition of Blade Servers. I Matthew Johnson, IT Manager, is recommending purchasing four Blade Servers. He asked the board for questions or comments regarding the configuration he is recommending. Mr. Turner asked Mr. Johnson how much hard disk space there is per server. Mr. Johnson explained that there is very little because he has ordered the EMC NAS and we will be consolidating all of the storage needs to one source. Mr. Johnson said each server will come with 74.3GB of storage space and 8GB of memory. He stated that all of the Blade Servers will have VM Ware except for one and it will have SQL. We will be using it for our database server and consolidating all of our databases. Mr. Turner asked if there is any reason why we are switching from Dell Servers to IBM. Mr. Johnson said the reason is mostly for reliability and the fact that we are going with IBM on many other items. Mr. Harton asked if we had solicited bids from Dell. Mr. Johnson said that we had not solicited bids from Dell because he feels that IBM is a much more stable platform than Dell due to the fact it has been in the Industry longer and he is familiar with it. Mr. Lawrence said he did not feel comfortable making comments on this particular item if we are talking about specific brands of Blade Servers versus specific configurations due to a conflict of interest relating to his employer. John Harton asked if we are required to solicit multiple bids from different vendors by law. Rebecca Koo, Finance Director, said that we are required to do that if it is over twenty-five thousand dollars. She also stated that the purpose of bringing it to the board is to get approval on a configuration and then we will go out for three bids to present to council. Mr. Johnson I said that the department has done the research and feel it will be supported for a long period of time and have a good life. He expects the Switches and NAS to have a ten year life. Mr. Harton asked what the point to failure rate is on HP and Mr. Johnson said he would have to go back to his documentation. Mr. Turner said that HP, Dell, and IBM is really a personal preference and will get you the same results. Mr. Johnson said that currently Dell has no Blade Servers with multiple back planes. He has used it in the past and found equipment that is more reliable and has less cost of ownership. The management tools are included instead of purchasing them separately. Mr. Marshall asked what would be brought to the council. Mr. Johnson said the IBM Blade Center is what he would recommend and he would have quotes from three different vendors that are certified to sell to the state. He said he will turn it over to Bob Sparkman, Purchasing Agent for the city, to go out for quotes. Mr. Marshall stated that Mr. Johnson will get questions from the council as to why he recommended IBM versus Dell. Mr. Harton recommended that we go out for bid on Specs and not brand. He stated that Mr. Johnson could still recommend IBM but suggested he get bids on the specs and not brand. Mr. Harton asked what the Blade Server will be hooked up to. Mr. Johnson replied they will be hooked to the EMC NAS that we have coming in and it has 2.7 Terabyte of storage. Mr. Harton asked where they will be placed and Mr. Johnson said they will be in City Hall. Mr. Marshall asked if the board had any further questions. Mr. Harton recommended that we bid for specs and not brand. Mr. Marshall asked for a motion to approve the Blade Server as a technically adequate solution. Mr. Turner made a motion to approve and Mr. Harton seconded the motion. Motion carried. 4.2 Discuss and recommend approving acquisition ofVM Ware I Mr. Johnson explained that the VM Ware will allow us to make each Blade Server into two servers and manage them individually. Essentially it will turn three of the servers that we are purchasing into six. We would be able to power down a single instance of the server instead of shutting down the entire server. Mr. Johnson said it is a cost effective way to double our servers. Mr. Harton asked why we would only be using this on three servers when we are purchasing four. Mr. Johnson said we will be using SQL on the fourth server and he feels the usage of that server will warrant a full Blade Server. Mr. Lawrence asked if this item depends on item one. Mr. Johnson said if we do not have item one there will be no need for the VM Ware. Mr. Marshall asked if Mr. Johnson has experience with VM Ware. Mr. Johnson said that he has minimal experience but Bruce Maker, IT Specialist for the city, has a lot of experience with VM Ware. Mr. Marshall asked if the board has any further comments. Mr. Marshall asked for a motion to approve the solution as technically adequate. Mr. Turner made a motion to approve and Mr. Lawrence seconded the motion. Motion carried. 4.3 Discuss and recommend approving acquisition of Wireless connectivity between outlying offices and City Hall. I Mr. Johnson explained this is to eliminate the connectivity cost of One Harris Plaza, the Animal Control Facility, Water Distribution, Water treatment and the maintenance shed that is across Main Street. He is recommending this solution because they currently have ADSL and it is very slow and unreliable. This will eliminate about four to five hundred dollars monthly in connectivity cost. It will also provide a more reliable connection. Mr. Turner asked what the actual solution is. Mr. Johnson explained that we will put an Omni-directional tower on top of City Hall and also place one on top of a light at the ball field next to One Harris Plaza. We will also put a directional antennae on each site. Mr. 2 I Harton asked if this will be compatible with the citywide wireless program that has been discussed and Mr. Johnson said it will. Mr. Harton asked if the antennae will be encrypted. Mr. Johnson said it will have 128 bit encryption. Mr. Turner asked if the hard wires that are in place will be used. Mr. Johnson said the internal networking will be the same. We are eliminating the recurring cost of the data lines. Mr. Lawrence asked if we will be maintaining any hard wire connectivity for back up. Mr. Johnson said that we will not be. Mr. Johnson explained that if the connection goes down there will be a four hour response time for Cisco to get it back up and running. Mr. Lawrence asked if the response if twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Mr. Johnson said it is. Mr. Harton asked if the Twenty-two thousand dollar quote includes the tower. Mr. Johnson said it does. Mr. Harton asked if the main connection will be at city hall. Mr. Johnson said it will be. Mr. Marshall asked if we will have any frequency issues that we have to deal with. Mr. Johnson said there will be none. Mr. Harton asked if it will be possible for someone to hook in with an outside computer. Mr. Johnson said it will be but not unless we give them the access to do so. He said that we will be putting in 128 bit encryption. Mr. Harton suggested that when presenting this to council Mr. Johnson should mention that the dedicated lines are expensive and there would be cost savings with this option. Mr. Marshall asked for a motion from to approve the solution as technically adequate. Mr. Turner motioned to approve the recommendation and Mr. Lawrence seconded the motion. Motion carries. 4.4 Discuss and recommend approving acquisition of Tape Backup Solutions. I Mr. Johnson explained that the tape back-up currently in use is very slow. Mr. Turner asked if the quote includes tapes. Mr. Johnson said it does include about 50 tapes. Mr. Johnson said the current back up takes from approximately 6pm to 7am every day. Mr. Harton asked if this has an automatic tape changer. Mr. Johnson said it does. Mr. Harton asked what the solution to change tapes is. Mr. Johnson said that we currently have not worked out a new policy due to the retention policies required by the state. He will have to work with each director on what their departmental needs are. Mr. Harton said that if we are not archiving off data then it will stay on the NAS. Mr. Johnson explained the issues that he is facing due to the retention policies and he does not want to set a scheme until it is an all encompassing policy. Mr. Harton asked about the time savings with this solution. Mr. Johnson said with the new back-up system it will take at most an hour and a half. Mr. Harton asked if the back-up will be hooked directly to the NAS. Mr. Johnson said it will be. Mr. Marshall asked for a motion to approve the solution as technically adequate. Mr. Lawrence motioned to approve and Mr. Harton seconded the motion. Motion carried. 15.0 I ADJOURNMENT With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 7: 18 p.m. APPROVED: I 2~~~ 3