The Australian Government Antarctic Division (AGAD) is tendering for a storage area network (SAN) due to a massive growth in data at a rate of eight terabytes annually.
The tender stipulates the SAN must have an initial capacity of 20 terabytes, scaling to 50 terabytes within the five-year life of the contract.
At the moment the AGAD uses approximately 0.5TB for its database, 0.5TB for E-mail and over 6 terabytes for file sharing.
File sharing is done between the Ice, Ocean, Atmosphere and Climate divisions, the Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Antarctic Marine Living Resources and the Multimedia Unit of Information Services, who estimate annual storage requirements exceeding 7.0TB.
The SAN must support Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000, Windows Vista Enterprise, Solaris Versions 8 and 10, Fedora core Four and Apple OS X. Enterprise system support entails VMWare Versions 2 and 3, Microsoft Exchange 2000/2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005, Oracle DBMS 10.0G R2, and the Trim electronic document management system.
According to tender documents, an initial 20Tb will be integrated into the existing IT server and software environment including all relevant client licensing and monitoring solutions for an estimated 500 users.
"The SAN must be able to provide scheduled and manually initiated non-disruptive copies of AGAD's file shares, Microsoft Exchange server, Microsoft SQL server and Oracle database," tender documents said.
"The catalogue must be user configurable and be capable of tracking all tape movements both on and off-site at AGAD's Kingston headquarters and within the SAN solution itself.
"Whilst tenderers are free to submit various proposals for alternate solutions, it is expected that the SAN's internal architecture will comprise three tiers; primary, secondary and archival storage, ie D2D2T.
"It is envisaged that primary storage will consist of high-performance fibre channel disks, secondary storage will consist of larger capacity, slower disks (eg SATA), whilst a tape library at the third tier will provide both the capability to store information online on tape - with eventual archive for storage off-site long-term and permit regular backups for disaster recovery purposes."
The successful tenderer is also responsible for implementing a disaster recovery plan and an expected upgrade path.
Delivery and installation of the SAN in AGAD HQ in Kingston, Tasmania is expected no later than March 30, 2007. All data and server migration is due by April 30, 2007.
For more information goto www.aad.gov.au. Tenders close February 9, 2007.