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BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL. Cabinet. 27 November 2008

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AGENDA ITEM NO 16

BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL

Cabinet

27 November 2008

Report of: Strategic Director of Transformation Title: Improving ICT Resilience : Data Centre II

Ward: N/A

Officer Presenting Report: Head of Information & Communications Technology

Contact Telephone Number: 0117 9222081

RECOMMENDATION

That Cabinet approve the establishment of a second data centre (computer server room) in the Council House, lower ground floor, financed from the ICT replacement reserve and energy savings.

Summary

A data centre is needed to replace the ageing computer room in the Council House attic.

It will improve resilience by reducing the risk of plant failure and will provide space to set up business continuity for critical systems in the event of a major failure at one of the data centres.

It will provide the server hosting space needed to support “New Ways of Working” and other future developments.

The proposed data centre will have exemplary energy efficiency and will deliver long term energy savings.

The proposed supplier has been selected by a tender through the BEPS e-tendering system and the work will be completed by the end of May 2009.

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The data centre will be funded from existing approved ICT replacement budgets, and future energy savings.

The significant issues in the report are :

1. A new data centre (server room) is needed to replace the computer room in the Council House attic (CRITA). The cooling plant in CRITA is unreliable and has caused service failure and the attic floor is not strong enough to allow additional servers to be housed there. The attic data centre was set up 10 years ago, as a temporary measure during office moves in the Council House.

2. The data centre is necessary to set up ICT support for Business Continuity, and to house servers needed in support of the building

rationalisation, and the New Ways of Working programmes. The forward server plan shows a net increase in the server requirement from 362 when the data centre is completed to 391 in 5 years time. The plan is conservative and includes a reduction by 175 servers through

'virtualisation'.

3. The data centre room will be set up in the ground floor of the Council House, in an area without external windows that is not suitable for office space.

4. The Council House offers a good location for a data centre because it is a core building, has an electrical generator, and fast resilient

communication links.

5. The data centre will be energy efficient, with 20% of the project cost coming from a loan repaid from 5 year energy savings. It will include energy monitoring to ensure minimum energy use, and include provision for future waste energy re-use. It fully supports the Council's objectives for sustainability and carbon dioxide reduction.

6. The data centre will be funded from existing ICT replacement funds, together with an energy efficiency loan based on 5 year energy savings.

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Policy

The proposal will contribute to the Council's strategic objectives as follows : 1. Increased computer systems resilience - contributes to improved

customer service and availability of key systems.

2. New Ways of Working - supports new initiatives to promote flexible, mobile and home working reducing travel and unnecessary staff journeys.

3. Transformation - underpins many aspects of the transformation change programme which is heavily reliant on introducing new computer systems to support change.

4. Energy use - the new data centre will use less energy to cool servers than the existing facility thus reducing the Council's carbon footprint.

Consultation 5. Internal

CSS/ICT Section

The work has been managed as an ICT Prince2 project, with a project board comprising :

Project Executive : Stewart Long, Head of ICT

Senior Supplier : Chris Lovatt, Infrastructure Development Manager Customer : Geoff Endicott, Infrastructure Services Manager

Finance Officer : Steve Bratchel / John Perkins

The ICT section provided the technical specification for the data centre. Property Services

Richard Hardisty, Facilities Manager and Geoffrey Robinson, Head of Building Practice, have been the main point of contact between Property Services and the project.

Property Services specified the interface between the building and the data centre and for components that must be standardised across the Council.

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Property Services have been fully involved in the evaluation of other options for the location of the data centre.

Ken Howes provided professional input to the JCT tender documents. James Gillman, Business Continuity Officer

Paul Isbel, Energy Management Procurement

Kirsty Wood, Procurement Specialist provided procurement advice and reviewed tender documents and the evaluation model.

Legal

David Cox, Contracts Solicitor Finance

Financial input is an integral part of an ICT Project, and the ICT finance officer has agreed the funding, validated the business case and the whole life cost evaluation for the tender.

External

6. Not applicable

Context

7. Bristol City Council relies heavily on computer servers for a wide range of uses including :

Providing information to the public on the web Local Tax

Registering Births, Deaths and Marriages Evaluating risk, eg flood

Managing projects Paying staff

Email and calendars

Accessing the intranet and internet Advertising jobs

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8. These servers work in the background and go unnoticed, but the Council's day to day work is seriously hindered and for some services stop completely, if servers stop working.

9. To operate reliably, servers need: protected power, cooling, specialist racking, reliable networking, fire protection and access control. This is provided by a purpose built server room with associated plant. These rooms are also referred to as data centres.

10. The Council has centralised it servers over the last 5 years, achieving considerable savings by :

• removing the need for 80 servers, a net reduction of 17% of the server

population;

• closing 30 departmental server rooms, removing the maintenance and

replacement burden of the associated plant and releasing significant floor area for use as office space;

• enabling the managed desktop which allows users to work flexibly from

most of the Council's computers, with Council wide login security, file system, office suite, and email / calendar and intranet.

11. This has strained the two principal data centres :

• Romney House - an 8 year old facility, has coped but is now full, with

50% more servers than when it was first set up;

• CRITA is not up to the task - this is a 10 year old facility that was set

up to overcome a temporary problem during building re-organisation in the Council House. The cooling system, which was installed to cool the mainframe, is 17 years old and past the end of its reliable working life. It is kept going by continued vigilance of the support staff, but did fail at the beginning to 2007, stopping 25% of the Councils servers and

taking the Council's public web site offline for nearly 24 hours. The existing cooling plant has to be supplemented with temporary equipment every summer.

12. The ICT section is about to introduce server virtualisation and remove another 175 servers over 5 years, but conservative estimates for; flexible (home) working, business continuity, and small server growth, will

increase the number of servers from 362 servers now to 390 in 5 years time. There is no room in Romney and CRITA, for the additional servers.

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13. Business continuity planning has increased in priority recently. Having all servers in one location is now seen as an unacceptable risk to an

organisation's operation. A second data centre is an essential

prerequisite to support business continuity for its servers. Bristol City Council has an advisory, planning, and leadership role, to develop business continuity planning in the community. It would be highly inappropriate if the Council were seen to be promoting business continuity planning, while not doing it ourselves.

14. It is proposed to build a modular room in the lower ground floor of the Council House. The self contained structure will be resistant to flooding and water leaks, provide access security, and fire protection. The moat will be used for cooling to avoid the noise associated with the more usual chillers, but air chillers will be used at times when the moat is cleaned. Quiet units have been specified and they will be located out of sight for compatibility with the building's listed status.

15. It is not economic to re-use the waste heat at this time, but provision has been made to tap into the system in future. There will be an opportunity to re-evaluate this in 4 year's time, when some electrical heating in the Council house is scheduled to be replaced.

16. The project plan allows for Council House parking, storage constraints and the building usage.

17. The procurement has been carried out in accordance with the Bristol City Council restricted procurement regulations as an e-tender through the Councils BEPS system. The contract will be let using the JCT

intermediate form of contract.

18. Tender evaluation of the bids has produced a clear winner. This was the bid that incorporated cooling with Council House moat water in the most energy efficient design. The tender information is being validated with further information from the bidder, a site visit and technical interview. 19. Electricity prices are increasing at about twice the rate of inflation,

additional climate change levies will be introduced in 2010 and data

centre energy usage is coming under increasing scrutiny. For this reason the financial evaluation of the tender was based on the whole life cost over 10 years, not only initial price.

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21. The winning tenders power efficiency calculations have been validated by the Councils energy efficiency team and savings subjected to scenario analysis, to give confidence that real savings will be realised.

22. The budget includes the energy efficiency loan and price for the preferred Tender. It is sufficient to cover the second bid, in the unlikely event that the preferred bidder fails due diligence validation.

Proposal

23. Cabinet is asked to approve the project with a budget of £578,000 to be financed from the existing ICT replacement fund, and energy

management and facilities management resources.

Other Options Considered 24. Do nothing

24.1 This is not a realistic option. The cooling system in CRITA will have to be upgraded and the Romney facility extended, if this project is not approved.

24.2 This option will neither provide space to house additional servers required by the ICT server plan, nor allow even distribution across two sites necessary for business continuity.

25. External rented private sector data centre space (co-location) 25.1 Four co-location hosts have been identified in Bristol :

• one was too small;

• two were considerably more expensive;

• one was a similar cost to the new data centre, but offered less

future flexibility.

25.2 There appeared to be a high risk that tendering for co location for the Council servers would not produce a more cost effective service.

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26. Other sites in the Council

26.1 The options were appraised at a meeting on 12 March 2007 and documented in a Property Services report of 19/04/07. Sites considered were :

St Annes

Council House Vessels area. Part of the original heating system under the ramp at the front of the Council House

BBond

Council House Old Treasury Council House Park Street A Council House Park Street B Council House Park Street C Wilder Street

Most were rejected because the high cost made them un-affordable. 26.2 Long term maintenance issues with the fabric of the building were

the reason for rejecting the Council House Park Street C option. The proposed use of a free standing modular data centre

overcomes all of these.

26.3 Extending the Romney House data centre

The risk associated with hosting all of the Council's servers on one site is unacceptable as failure, as it would leave the Council with no computer systems in the event of failure.

A second site will allow servers to be set up to better support business continuity in future.

26.4 Proposed new Hengrove site

This option occurred at a late stage in preparation of the tender documents and there was not time to prepare a fully costed proposal, but the Council House remains the preferred option because :

• there is no clear benefit to be gained from locating the data centre at the Hengrove site;

• the Hengrove site will have a 10 year lease, not sufficiently

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• locating the data centre at Hengrove will double the annual wide area network cost for the site and add approximately £200,000 over 5 years

Risk Assessment

27. Risk from the project not being approved

27.1 There will not be enough space to house servers needed for :

• home working and building rationalisation; • business continuity

27.2 The cooling system for CRITA (Computer Room in the Council House attic) will fail with increasing frequency, removing the service provided by 27% of the Council's servers. This is expected to

happen on 1 to 5 occasions per year potentially removing the service for 0.5 to 2 days on each occasion.

27.3 It will be difficult to deliver a resilient, reliable computer service to support existing and planned services.

27.4 Risk that the demand for servers is greater than planned - the data centre is modular and can be extended at a future date if

necessary.

27.5 Risk that the contractor does not complete the work acceptably - this has been minimised by using the JCT intermediate contract which ensures that stage payments are limited to completed work.

Equalities Impact Assessment

28. The Equalities Impact checklist has been considered and no implications have been identified.

This is a 'lights out facility' that does not normally have human operators. It does have ramp access and space to move heavy items, appropriate lifting aids will be provided if required by operators for changing servers. Services will be routed to allow No 3 lift to be deepened to improve access.

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Property Services Implications

29. The project has liaised with Property Services to ensure the data centre meets Property Services objectives for :

• building occupancy and the Council House conservation plan;

• disaster and contingency planning;

• energy reduction.

Agreed by Richard Hardisty, Facilities Manager

Environmental Impact Assessment

30. The significant impacts of this proposal are :

• the Council's servers will be more resilient to major disasters and

use less energy for cooling;

• the proposals include the following measures to mitigate the

impacts;

• energy use and server temperature will be continually monitored, and operating conditions adjusted to minimise energy use.

31. The net effects of the proposals are :

• the Councils energy use and carbon footprint will be lower.

Verified by Steve Ransom, Environmental Performance Programme Co-ordinator.

Legal and Resource Implications Legal

The purpose for this procurement is to secure best value for the Council, to prevent corruption or the suspicion of it whilst ensuring transparency of the process and fairness to all tenderers seeking to do business with the Council.

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The successful company will be required to contract with the Council by way of a JCT Intermediate Form of Contract 2005 With Contractors Design as amended by the Property Department of Resources Directorate.

The legal section was prepared by David Cox, Contracts Solicitor Financial

(a) Revenue

The main ongoing revenue costs of the project relate to electricity

and the maintenance contract for the cooling plant.

The specification for Data Centre II requires it to be more energy efficient than CRITA or the data centre at Romney House. On the strength of this saving it is expected that an Energy Efficiency loan will be obtained that will pay part of the capital costs of construction. This loan will have to be repaid from the savings in electricity costs

generated by the more efficient equipment. However, it should be noted that over time the plan is to house more servers than in CRITA to

provide the benefits detailed in the report. This means the saving is relative to what the cost would be if the increasing server numbers were cooled by less efficient plant.

The maintenance contract cost for the new data centre is likely to

be only marginally greater than that for the existing data centre

which would cease.

(b) Capital

The project will be funded from the following sources : £459K ICT reserves

£119K Energy Savings Loan (estimate dependant on level of energy efficiency of project relative to Romney data centre)

Total available funds £578 k

The total cost of the project is estimated at £578k

The financial Section was prepared by John Perkins, Management Accountant and approved by Stephen Skinner Head of Finance CSS CEX

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Land

Not Applicable Personnel Not Applicable

Appendices:

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ACCESS TO INFORMATION) ACT 1985 Background Papers:

Building Scheme

CSS/ICT 10 year server plan

81208 Data Centre II Business Case 81208 Data Centre II PID

81208 Data Centre II Project Plan

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