Computing Initiatives

Consolidation

We have completed our mission to consolidate a large number of data centers in our Data Center Consolidation project.  In its wake, we have begun optimizing the heavily virtualized environment, implementing a robust co-location site as its backup and maintaining system redundancy. The possibility of moving to cloud-based services is looking more and more feasible, and desirable. 

Virtualization

Virtualization continues to be a standard business operation at the City. We have not slowed our efforts to further our virtualization strategy and consolidate our infrastructure. We have developed a process where all new requests are provisioned in the virtual environment. Hundreds of servers are optimized that use profile management for efficiency, reaping real-world results such as improved redundancy using Vmotion and improved performance through the use of Vmware’s HA (High Availability). Now, requests are fulfilled for multiple environments in which QA and development are conducted. Prior to virtualization, the high cost of a physical machine for each function prevented such requests from being achieved. We are taking steps to consolidate even further by populating blade chassis, shrinking our footprint as well as power consumption.

Co-location

Our disaster recovery capabilities were strengthened when we acquired a co-location space reachable by the City’s fiber network. For the past year, we have striven to extend our high availability strategy by testing devices established in the co-location. We have completed live recovery of our SQL database, as well as various other applications. We moved the core of our backup infrastructure to the co-location site, for the purpose of separating out main drive systems, away from backup and restore functions. Lastly, by optimizing the Petabyte of data through hieratical storage and de-duplication, we’ve successfully virtualized our storage environment.

Shared Services/Cloud/Hosted

We have seen significant collaborative efforts among varying City groups that have resulted in increased communication between City Hall and agencies about technology changes and implementation of new services. This year we have achieved just that by not only sharing services through our computational and storage resources, but we have extended the services into real world solutions. Departments can now leverage our networking infrastructure through the use of video cameras and VOIP over our network.  The Library, Police, and Transportation departments are equipped with capabilities that would not be possible without Shared Services.

Continuing our collaboration with other large City departments, in conjunction with the School and Police Departments we have issued an RFP (Hosted Messaging (Email) and Collaboration Solution) for mail message archiving and collaboration. Moving forward, we could see our archival functions hosted in the cloud. This is a major initiative for the City, especially due to the high population of users and the several varying environments that the service will replace.

In addition to the real world solutions that Shared Services has spawned, we have also expanded the overall number of departments and services we provide through shared services. We implemented Enhanced Service Levels, increasing uptime and installing an Operations Manager. This enhanced our preventative maintenance measures. 

From a support perspective, we support multiple city-wide systems, running many applications. We handle the complexity of City departments with an effective Critical Incident Management process.

Total # of Incidents July 2011 - June 2012% of Incidents Handled Within SLA Response Time% of Incidents Closed W/O Reference to Other Support Levels# and % of Incidents Resolved W/O Need for Visit
8100%100%100%