08-12-2019 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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AGENDA ITEM Item No.: Item Description: Hosted Servers Date: August 12, 2019 Presenter: Ron Olson, Agenda City Administrator's Finance Director Section: Report 1. Purpose. The purpose of this agenda item is to gain council approval of using LOGIS for a hosted server solution for the City's computer network. 2. Background. The City's computer network currently includes three network servers that are located upstairs in City Hall. The servers are: OR -Mail which hosts our Microsoft Exchange email system, all employee email, boxes, and employee data files; OR-Sql which hosts our Active Directory, network printers and our server based programs including our accounting software; OR -Police stores police files, squad camera videos, and software installation files. Network users can access their files locally with no need for an internet connection. This type of network setup was the standard for many years, but no longer meeting our needs for ever increased file storage needs and data security. As technology has evolved and higher bandwidths have become more available, networks have been evolving to a cloud based architecture. In this type of setup, our servers would be "hosted" at an offsite location and data files would be accessed through an internet connection. We are already moving incrementally to this type of networking through applications like the Police Records System, Citizen Serve, Cartegraph, and our use of the LOGIS cloud backup service. LOGIS, a consortium of local metro area cities was developed to allow cities to have access to higher end technology solutions that would be prohibitively expensive for an individual city, offers hosted a server solution for City networks. They are a local company headquartered in Golden Valley. They are compliant with BCA requirements with respect to police data. The city currently utilizes LOGIS, for network support, cloud backup and Police Records. There are many advantages to a hosted server's structure. One of the biggest advantages is data security. By utilizing redundant sites, our real time data exists in two separate physical locations. This significantly reduces the risk of data loss. The hosted server option also protects the data by providing superior protection from hacking and malware attacks with a full scale intrusion detection system and dedicated staff available to monitor network activity and threats. In addition to the risk of data loss due to a server failure or a catastrophic event at city hall, the hosted option allows staff to continue to work. Currently, if one of our servers was to fail, we would be unable to access the data stored on that server. This outage would last a day or longer before a replacement server could be online. If City Hall was to experience a catastrophic event like a fire or tornado, we would lose all access to our data for days. Because LOGIS has two physically separate data centers, one in Golden Valley and the other in Brooklyn Park, they could experience a failure at one of the locations and we would continue to have access to our data. If City Hall experienced a catastrophic event, we would still be able to access our data as long as we had a computer with an internet connection. Other advantages include less physical equipment to update and maintain, less equipment to fail, less equipment to replace, and a reduction in licensing fees. Under the design being proposed, LOGIS would host four virtual servers: OR -Email, OR -ADO 1, and OR - Prepared By: R16 Reviewed By: j1jZ Approved By: �b