Problem/Opportunity Statement:

An independent assessment completed in 2010 by the TPI group outlined several areas where data center risks and overhead costs are not appropriate. Accordingly, the State of Vermont is initiating several projects to reduce cost, reduce risk, and provide better utilization of new and existing information technology resources. The State does not currently benefit from operating within a shared data center environment. Therefore, the numerous current data centers/server rooms will be consolidated into 2 or 3 common data centers. The reduction in data centers will allow us to increase our focus on specific data center improvements such as cooling, power redundancy and networking, rather than continuing to maintain several antiquated data centers/server rooms. Completing this effort will increase the efficiency of data center management, reduce overall costs, improve security and better utilization of State’s resources. Ultimately, this consolidation will reduce the largest data center risk in the State data centers by removing data centers from the flood plain.

Project Description:

There will be a vendor engagement to assess physical and operational requirements and provide a data center roadmap that would allow us to achieve our goals. The roadmap should clearly detail identity tiering and maturity models following industry standards, and operational Service Level Agreements (SLAs) required to co-locate and/or host equipment from numerous State Agencies. Finally, identify potential location(s) and perform assessment(s) for a Secondary Data Center site using a host model/co-location approach.

The State Data Centers in scope for this project are:

• National Life, 1 National Life Drive, Montpelier (app. 1,200 to 2,500 sq. ft)
• McFarland House, 5 Perry Street, Barre (app. 1,500 sq. ft.)

Existing Data Center and Server Rooms slated to move to National Life

• Agency of Human Services, 103 S. Main Street, Waterbury 
• Agency of Human Services 289 Hurricane Lane, Williston 
• Department of Tax, 133 State Street, Montpelier 
• Department of Labor, 5 Green Mountain Drive, Montpelier
• Agency of Transportation, 1 National Life, Montpelier 
• Education server rooms at 120 State Street, Montpelier and 1311 Route 302, Berlin (and any other server rooms within the SOV Executive Branch)
• Agency of Human Services, 108 Cherry Street, Burlington will be assessed for possible secondary disaster recovery environment as well as assessed for power, cooling, WAN, floor space, environmental monitoring, cabling and capacity planning. (app 867 sq. ft.)
• Department of Public Safety (DPS) 103 S. Main Street, Waterbury
• DII, 133 State Street, Montpelier

Project Goals/Objectives:

SOV Executive Branch consolidation into 2 or 3 common data centers.
Vendor engagement objectives are:

1. Provide assessments on two State’s data centers
2. Provide recommendations on meeting future growth requirements
3. Provide implementation plan, timeline and costs
4. Establish Tier rating for data centers with Roadmap
5. Establish a Environmental/Security monitoring solution
6. Establish all required processes and procedures to manage co-located equipment 

Project Status: RED