Local Office Hyper Converged infrastructure Refresh

Description

Each Local Office has a small amount of IT Infrastructure (networked storage and compute) used to host casework applications and store map tile images from OS which are used for multiple casework apps. Vendor support for the current equipment ends in July 2024. HMLR currently have 2 devices per Local Office, except Nottingham, with Coventry also being decommissioned shortly. To enable users to access casework systems locally i.e. not utilising Azure HMLR would like to replace the remaining 12 Local Offices' devices with a single device that is "right sized" in terms of compute power and resilience.

Services to be hosted and supported on this platform include: Local Office application drives - MapTiles, Appns, etc. facilitate casework applications natively from a user's device rather than connecting to Azure). Local Office Print Servers, to include Office Copy and RR print servers. Software deployment cache serve

Data is replicated from a central repository to each Local Office, so that the data held at each location is the same. There is no user data held at these locations - all user data (O:, S:, drives) is held centrally. The services listed above need to be held locally to allow for efficient use. This solution will provide users the option of using either Azure or on-premises infrastructure to access casework systems and also act as a business continuity solution if Azure was to fail at any point.

Commercial have been notified by IT operations of several vendors that could meet our hardware requirements as the technical solution can operate in isolation from any central services HMLR currently manage. The current solution comprises hardware and software from Nutanix. HMLR will take this opportunity widen the market to other hardware vendors, although the hardware must remain compliant with the Nutanix software stack, which is licensed until February 2027.

The lifespan of the new devices is expected to be greater than 5 years, HMLR would like to procure the devices with 5 years of support. Procuring the extended support with the devices has historically been shown to represent best value. Any devices procured for offices HMLR subsequently close will be utilised within the central data centres.