Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Police Department

TO:	Diane Stoddard, Interim City Manager
FROM: CC:	Michael Mehl, System Administrator Tarik Khatib, Chief of Police Adam Heffley, Police Captain
DATE:	August 20, 2015
RE:	Digital Media Backup, Recovery and Storage

Background

The Police Department’s digital media has outgrown the current backup solution, Retrospect 7.7, which debuted in 2012. Retrospect lacks modern features required to protect our infrastructure from threats to digital storage systems. These threats are becoming more commonplace, so we must maintain a strong back up system for all Department data. Retrospect is also unreliable and in turn, excess administrative effort is required. Another issue we are facing is that our storage hardware is at capacity and it is likely we will have digital storage needs in the future. These constraints are alleviated by updating the backup system to a modern software and hardware combination.

Project Description

The solution to the department’s digital media backup and storage problem is a modern software and hardware package. This package includes a feature-set that is aligned with the changes and future growth of our infrastructure. Two vendors that include those feature-sets are Veeam and Nexsan. The department computing infrastructure is heavily virtualized to reduce server TCO. Veeam and Nexsan natively support that philosophy and have designed products that cater to our enterprise. In comparison to other vendors, the long term support is very attractive.

Funding Sources

The necessary funds to cover the costs of the storage, backup software, and support ($45,416) have been identified in the Equipment Line item. This line item was previously identified to address equipment needs within the department. The Department’s software maintenance/contract line item will cover the annual renewal of both purchases after three years.

Action

Police Department staff requests approval from the City Commission to authorize the purchase of Veeam Backup Essentials Enterprise from SHI through State of Kansas Contract #36093 at the attached quote cost of $5,160.00.

Police Department staff also requests approval from the City Commission to authorize the purchase of an Imation Nexsan E48VT from Eagle Inc. as a sole source vendor at the attached quote cost of $40,256.00.