New RFP for State of Minnesota Data Centers.

On November 4^th the State of Minnesota and the Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) released a request for proposal (RFP) to reduce the number of data centers down from the current 36 to 2-4 data centers in the next five years.  (http://www.state.mn.us/portal/mn/jsp/home.do?agency=OETweb)  There are many reasons to do this from improving security, increasing efficiency, and reducing cost.  States across the country are currently doing this, some with good results and others with problems.  It may be in the states best interest to look at what has happened with others before signing any agreement with an outside vendor to consolidate all of the state’s data in a private sector location.

What are the Facts?

We have 36 data centers located all over the state.  We have some data being stored in small machine rooms and even a few in closets. Many of these are not in a safe place, were not built to house data and don’t meet with basic standards for housing data. It is also not efficient to house so many sites when the cost to heat and cool them is going up. A consulting firm was hired in 2008 to do a study of the state’s data centers.  The study found that our data was at high risk levels and they believed that we could be facing up to 5 “significant failures over the next three years”. (OET, 11/4/2010)

What Now?

Since the report came out OET has been working hard to come up with solutions to reduce risk and save the state some money.  They have looked at completely outsourcing the data center functions, building a new facility to house all of the states data, merging some of the states data centers using current locations, and finding a third party who has a site to house our data.  OET’s RFP has chosen the co-location plan to find an outside business to store our data, yet continue to have State employees oversee and maintain the data. This new facility will house the states most critical data in a high level facility that will insure safety and resiliency.

All of this being said, is it a good idea to do this?

Over the past year I have heard from many people about controversy surrounding this change.  There are professionals who have been working in the data centers who believe that we are not facing as significant of a problem as Excipio has been saying.  There have been a few minor data shut downs all of which have been dealt with quickly with no lose of data.  The State also has some new buildings that could be optimized for better efficiency.  The cost to do this might not make this effective.

Recently Virginia had a data center incident where they had major outages in a number of areas.  Virginia has outsourced there centers to Northrop Grumman a private vendor who specializes in data centers.  Texas has also had problems with some of there vendors. 

Something needs to be done.

Minnesota does have too many data centers and something has to change. This FRP is a good opportunity to look at all that is available and way all the pro’s and cons to make sure the state’s and citizens best interest is being looked after.