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Home My WebLink About09/16/2014 Purchase Two Replacement Storage Area NetworksA[cxant 1'rs;�it�t Village of Mount Prospect Mount Prospect, Illinois INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM TO. ASSISTANT VILLAGE MANAGER DAVE STRAHL FROM- IT DIRECTOR Aft DATE: AUGUST 26, 2014M Lit 1b SUBJECT: REQUEST TO WAIVE THE BID AND PURCHASE TWO REPLACEMENT STORAGE AREA NETWORKSI SL OLAor Staff is requesting approval to purchase two SANs (storage area networks) to acoc .date t e Village's increasing need for electronic data storage space. Storage needs have outgrown the - existing resources and will continue to grow. After substantial research, staff has determined that a Tegile HA2100 SAN will best meet the Village's needs. .Aorl Background The Village's file servers are primarily virtualized. Five Dell Equallogic SANs — three at Village Hall (VH) and two at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) - are used to house all the virtual servers. Replication is setup to copy data daily from the Village Hall datacenter to the EOC and vice versa so that, in the case of a catastrophic failure, data would never be more than a day old. However, the replication area on the EOC side is now full so some of the servers can no longer replicate. Until recently the Village has been able to keep storage needs manageable by establishing "Records Days" for employees to organize and clear out unneeded documents. Records Days have been a huge success but are no longer enough; more storage is still needed. The existing SANs are on the replacement schedule and two five-year-old SANs are available for replacement this year. However, the existing SANs are still viable and will be repurposed to store system backups. Research In the last few years there has been a great deal of change in the electronic data storage technology. Some of the features that would be most beneficial to the Village are listed below. • Compression: Ability to compact data by removing unnecessary information to allow more data per gigabyte of storage. • Deduplication: Ability to replace redundant blocks of data with pointers to the first block to allow more data per gigabyte of storage. • Snapshots: Ability to make copies of data volumes on the same SAN as the original. We use this feature now. • Replication: Ability to mirror data to a second data store. We use this feature now. • NAS (Network Attached Storage) Protocol Support: Ability to create data shares directly, without using an additional server operating system layer. This could potentially eliminate the need for some server licenses. Request to Purchase Two Replacement Storage Area Networks August 26, 2014 Page 2 • Expandability: Ability to add more storage to a SAN without buying an entire new SAN. • Flash SSD: Ability to use solid state flash drives for faster access. Hybrid systems use both flash drives and standard drives to increase speed while keeping the cost down. Frequently accessed data is automatically moved to the flash drives while infrequently accessed data is moved to the standard drives (auto -tiering). The availability of new technology allows staff to evaluate different vendors and their products. As part of the research, staff consulted expert opinions from the two unbiased resources below and chose three vendors with popular mid-range products. Datacenter Infrastructure Group, Inc., (DCIG) is a group of analysts with IT industry expertise who provide informed, third party analysis and commentary on IT technology solutions. In their "2014 Hybrid Storage Array Buyer's Guide", DCIG's highest ratings went to Tegile SANs, and secondly to EMC. Info -Tech Research Group Inc. is an information technology research and advisory company. In Info-Tech's "Vendor Landscape: Small to Mid -Range Storage Arrays", EMC and Dell are rated as "champions", and Tegile is rated as an "innovator". However, Dell has announced that its Equallogic product line will eventually be phased into their Compellent series of SAN products. The chart below compares features and prices for Equallogic, EMC and Tegile SANs. Only Tegile provides all the desired features. All line items include three years of support. 00 o « 0 C 3 c�a d ° m�Cn .-. -CL rn ~ � a a a m4) Z EC7 V� NC9 N v o N m N a` Dell Equallogic PS621 OX w/ 10K - X X X 8 21.6 - $73,112.60 Drives Dell Dell Equallogic PS621 OX w/ 15K - - X X X 8 14.4 - $72,737.90 Drives EMC VNXe3150 x x - x x 16 17.4 - $75,516.40 EMC VNX3200 X X X - X 48 18.6 300 $64,448.90 EMC VNX5200 w/o X X - - X 32 22.5 300 $72,141.18 Replication Presidio EMC VNX5200 w/ Continuous X X - X X 32 22.5 300 $131,578.84 Replication Note: EMC VNX5200 replication is continuous between sites instead of daily. Tegile HA2100 x x X x x 96 22 600 $82,600 Hipskind Request to Purchase Two Replacement Storage Area Networks August 26, 2014 Page 3 Staff visited another local municipality who is a Tegile customer. They are highly satisfied and are in the process of purchasing an additional SAN to install in a different building. Online customer reviews for the Tegile are positive as well. Also the HA2100 is expandable for the future by adding a shelf to hold additional drives, instead of purchasing a whole new SAN, which will save money later. Storage options were presented to the Village Technical Advisory Group (VTAG) on August 26, 2014. The group endorsed the purchase of the Tegile SANs. I recommend that the Village waive the bid process and purchase two Tegile HA2100 SANs from Hipskind for an amount not to exceed $82,600. The price includes the first three years of support. Ongoing support is $6,800/year. The HA2100 model was chosen because it will best meet the Village's needs. Funds are available for this purchase. IT Director I:\VB Request Memos\2014 Storage Request.docx