This purchase is to provide the necessary infrastructure for the continued migration and replacement of existing and new servers into the Nutanix system cluster in the City Hall data center.  These two additional nodes, plus additional memory for our existing infrastructure, allows Allen's IT department to densely pack virtual servers onto a highly-resilient infrastructure.  Density lowers total cost of ownership by using fewer physical machines to run a large number of city servers.

For Allen, moving to a hyperconverged infrastructure has shown benefits through simpler system administration, faster system deployments and upgrades, vastly improved reliability and high availability, and improved performance all at a cost similar to traditional, more complex virtual server environments.  This new platform has been adopted by organizations around the world, including several local cities, to provide the high availability organizations and citizens have come to expect.  This same kind of technology is what underlies public clouds such as Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The Nutanix platform continues the organization's push to simplify IT while making it more fault tolerant and fast to expand as our needs grow. This investment will result in a migration of existing physical servers, shrinking the physical footprint and reducing power and cooling requirements resulting in greener operations for the data center.

Through an approximate seven-year phased-in Nutanix HCI implementation, additional costs associated with the expansion of Nutanix HCI system will be recommended as future and existing servers will be phased out of service. Today's purchase concludes Year Two of the seven-year plan.

The costs associated with this item is funded through IT operating accounts in the General Fund.  By receiving pricing negotiated through Texas Department of Information Resources (Texas DIR), the City of Allen ensures that the equipment has been competitively procured.  Texas DIR leverages the cooperative buying power of the State government, local governments and school districts in Texas and ensures the best prices for equipment and services. Local Government Code, Chapter 271.102, authorizes a local government to participate in a cooperative purchasing program with another local government or a local cooperative organization. The Texas Local Government Code permits cooperative agreements between local governments for the purchase of goods and services and satisfies the requirement of local governments to seek competitive bids for purchase of such goods and services through supplier contracts.

Staff recommends that the City Council authorize the City Manager to purchase two Nutanix nodes and memory for the data center from CDW-G through the Texas Department of Information Resources for an Amount of $165,029.

I make a motion to authorize the City Manager to purchase two Nutanix nodes and memory for the data center from CDW-G through the Texas Department of Information Resources for an Amount of $165,029.