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Item 1.F.
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| City Council Regular | |
| Date: | 06/13/2022 |
| Title: | Enterprise & Public Safety Servers |
| Presented by: | David Watterson, IT Director |
| Department: | Information Technology |
| Presentation: | No |
| Legal Review | Not Applicable |
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that City Council approve the purchase of five (5) Dell Servers for to run our Public Safety & Enterprise Systems in the amount of $152,325
BACKGROUND (Consistency with Adopted Plans and Policies, if applicable)
The City of Billings runs all of our Public Safety & Enterprise Software Systems in a virtual server environment supported by five (5) physical Dell host servers. Information Technology planned on including these servers on the FY24 TRP and replacing them in August of 2023, however, new software releases in our virtual server software from VMWare are creating a problem with our existing hardware. Over the past month, we have had two (2) instances where service has been impacted by issues caused by incompatibility between the newest version of our virtual server software and our existing physical host servers. This incomparability has been identified by Dell and was unforeseen by city staff and Dell. We are rolling back our virtual server software to a previous release which will stabilize our environment, however, the previous software release will hit end of support in October of 2022. We need to proceed with replacement of our five (5) existing physical host servers in order to upgrade to the newest version of our virtual server software and ensure we can continue to deliver a stable and robust environment for our Public Safety and Enterprise Software Systems.
ALTERNATIVES
City Council may:
- Approve the purchase of five (5) Dell Servers to run all of our major computer software systems or,
- Not Approve and provide staff with direction on how to proceed.
FISCAL EFFECTS
The purchase of five (5) new Dell servers in the amount of $152,325 was not included in the FY2022 budget. Information Technology has a working budget balance of approximately $600,000. We are requesting a budget amendment in the amount of $150,000 to support the use of these reserves to fund this purchase.