Purpose

The council still operates a limited amount of on-premises ICT computing and storage infrastructure. Whilst most of its operations have moved to Cloud-based infrastructure, there are still some parts of its estate that rely upon on-premises services, particularly for cost-effective hosting of Virtual Machines.
The existing infrastructure (VxRail platform) is outdated and becoming increasingly expensive to license and support. It is prone to hardware failures. It is therefore proposed to transition to a new platform Hyper-V. This will provide new hardware and a fixed-price solution over 5-years at a lower cost than staying with the existing infrastructure and support supplier.

Decision

For the Director: Policy, Strategy

Alternative options considered

1. Discontinue the service. This is not viable due to the business-critical nature of the infrastructure.
2. Continue with VxRail. This would have increased risks to critical services through hardware failure, and would have incurred increased, unbudgeted licensing and support costs at contract renewal.
3. Delay migration to allow more time to confirm scope and design. This would have incurred increased, unbudgeted licensing and support costs for the VxRail, which would have had a minimum term contract that would have quickly become defunct. Issues with the global supply chain of necessary hardware components mean any delay would also materially increase the cost of the new hardware solution.
4. A fully Cloud-based alternative was also assessed and aligns with the Council's wider Digital and Technology Strategy. However, the cost and timeframe required to fully implement this approach would extend beyond the expiry of current VxRail contractual and support arrangements and therefore could not address the immediate business need.