To: Board of Supervisors
From: Marc Shorr, Information Technology Director
Report Title: Purchase Order with General DataTech, L.P.
☒Recommendation of the County Administrator ☐ Recommendation of Board Committee
RECOMMENDATIONS:
APPROVE and AUTHORIZE the Purchasing Agent, on behalf of the Chief Information Officer, to execute (1) a purchase order with General DataTech, L.P. (GDT) in the amount of $900,000, and (2) for a Statement of Work and End User Agreement with Pure Storage, Inc. for the purchase and installation of Pure Storage server hardware and support, effective December 17, 2024.
FISCAL IMPACT:
General Fund - approved IT Project Funding for FY 24/25, Project “Enterprise Private Cloud.”
BACKGROUND:
The Department of Information Technology (DOIT) Network Services team has identified 45 network servers that are outdated and no longer under maintenance or support, with ages ranging from 5 to over 10 years old. These servers are crucial for the County and various departments, but replacement parts and firmware upgrades are unavailable. Failure or compromise of these servers could cause significant outages. DOIT recommends replacing them with a Private Cloud infrastructure to consolidate and enhance the server environment, extending the lifecycle and reducing the risk of hardware failures.
The Pure Storage Flash Array is a hardware storage system designed to provide high-capacity, all-flash storage for enterprise environments, focusing on cost-effective, high-capacity storage for workloads like backups, archiving, and large-scale data storage.
This project will enable the County to provide a true enterprise platform for all County departments to utilize at a lower cost than replacing existing like-for-like server hardware. The result of which will provide an increased level of stability, reliability, enhanced data protection with data replication that minimizes the risk of data loss, uniform practice in server deployment, patching and maintenance. This will also reduce the amount of labor effort required to provide server/storage resources.
The purchase was competitively bid, with General DataTech, L.P. being awarded. The agreement with Pure Storage limits Pure Storage’s liability to the amount paid by County in the 12 months preceding the claim. The limitation of liability excludes damages for bodily injury, death, willful misconduct, or infringement claims.
CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
The consequence of not replacing outdated servers includes increased risk of hardware failures, leading to significant outages for critical county functions and departments. Additionally, the lack of available replacement parts and firmware updates means any server failure could result in prolonged downtime, compromising the County's operations and potentially causing data loss or security breaches.