Defence to replace water-damaged systems

The Defence Science and Technology Organisation is seeking to replace ten racks of data centre equipment damaged by heavy rains in December.

The equipment occupied two ground floor server rooms in Edinburgh, northern Adelaide, that were used for high-end signal and image processing by the research organisation’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance division.

No data was lost, a Defence spokesman said this week.

In tender documents issued on Friday, DSTO called for replacements “in the minimum amount of time, with minimum disruption to current remaining services”. The request for tender closes on 1 November.

The specs

Virtual servers, networking and storage equipment are required to be installed in eight racks in a 23-square-metre primary data centre and two racks in 12-square-metre secondary facility.

Racks are required to be “fully populated”, with connections to at least two mains power feeds – one uninterruptible and one direct mains feed – with automatic failover capabilities.

DSTO aimed to establish a 250 TB storage network, which could include disk- and tape-based tiers with an automatic, policy-based data management solution.

Some 50 TB of data is to be migrated from existing hardware to the new network. New equipment would also have to operate alongside three existing 19-inch racks in each of the data centres.

DSTO asked that the servers run VMware's virtualisation products, with virtual machines configured to automatically failover to the hosting server in the event of hardware failure.

The servers will host15 existing services, including domain name systems, web servers and Microsoft Exchange.

They are also expected to support at least 25 virtual desktop users, running a mix of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows 7, at any one time.

The two centres are to be connected by an existing 1 Gbps ethernet link; however, Defence required new equipment to support a future 10 Gbps upgrade.

All equipment requires ethernet connectivity, with no wireless capabilities. The tenderer is also required to use existing Active Directory or Centrify Direct Control tools for user authentication and authorisation.

Defence called for a built-in network intrusion detection system, and for racks to be locked and installed in accordance with the Australian Government Information Security Manual and Protective Security Manual.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Adelaide had its wettest December on record last year, experiencing five times the average rainfall for that month.

Defence said it had implemented remedial building improvements after the incident to “reduce the chance of such an occurrence”.