Don’t let the system crash.
During Indianola’s board meeting last Thursday Dean Nassar with the vendor HiComp told the board that some of the servers at city hall are outdated.
The current operating system running at city hall is Windows Server version 2012.
The desired server is the 2022 version.
“We are at the end of the rope with this server. It needs to be replaced like yesterday,” said Nassar.
HiComp did install a new backup battery system at city hall, and he said that it has 145 minutes of battery run time only because the servers help prevent data locks and power surges.
To replace the 2012 operating system, JANTEK, which runs the city’s time clock, has to be involved in the process, because their software is running on the current servers.
The JANTEK server is 12 years old, and the backup software went out of support two years ago.
Mark Wayfield and JANTEK made a program to help backup the data to the power system, Nassar said.
“That’s not good, because the way we are backing up if it fails, we may have some data, but we aren’t going to be able to pick out individual files if we have Windows-supported backup,” Nassar said.
If the system crashes at any time before the update, the time clocks may not work and payroll may not be accessible. Paychecks may have to be handwritten.
The power system is IBM, and it runs the DELTA software, which is 12 years old.
Nassar said the system is in need of an update.
“This system will be end of life Dec. 31 according to IBM,” said Nassar.
A proposal for a new system was presented to the board, and the price of the system is $57,249, which includes the company coming to the facility, migrating the software and data to the new system, and setting everything up.
There aren’t any compatibility issues with the updated software and IBM, Nassar said.
“We need to seriously consider replacing this system before the end of September,” Nassar said.
There is a maintenance plan for this system until Sept. 30.
Nassar advised the board to order the new equipment sometime in July due to the process of receiving all of the equipment within a reasonable time.
“We need at least a month that gives time to order the stuff by Sept. 3,” Nassar said.
There is built-in backup as well as recovery security within the system. The purchase of the server is provided by HiComp. Everything will be purchased from their distributor.
A five-year maintenance warranty will be included with Windows Server and the power system will have a three-year warranty.
“This is very critical,” said Nassar.
The IBM machine does have protection, if 1 drive crashes it will still operate. Nothing will be lost. If two drives crashed, then everything in the system would be lost. Nassar said, “The more mileage you get on those disk drives, the more risk of them crashing.”
The life expectancy these servers is six years.
“We need to seriously look at moving forward quickly with this replacement,” said Nassar.
The board told Nassar that the city will likely need to have a second quote, due to the cost of the new system. He was advised to return during the July 8 meeting.
“Let’s move with haste,” said Mayor Ken Featherstone.
