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MINUTES OF THE <br /> ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING <br />November 10, 2014 <br />7:00 o’clock p.m. <br />_____________________________________________________________________________________ <br />  <br />  Page 29 of 31  <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />CITY ADMINISTRTOR’S REPORT <br /> <br />17. CLOUD BACKUP SERVICES <br /> <br />Olson noted a couple of years ago the Council discussed data backup services and the cost at that time <br />was over $30,000. Olson stated with the Mediacom franchise, the City has the opportunity to look again <br />at whether to use a Cloud based system. A large portion of the data is police data, in particular video <br />from the squad cars. <br /> <br />Olson state currently the City has approximately three Terabytes of data stored on the computer network. <br />To protect against a loss of data, the City’s servers are backed up to magnetic tapes on a nightly basis. <br />Most of these tapes are stored on site in a fireproof cabinet. Each week one set of tapes is transported to <br />LOGIS for off-site storage. Olson indicated while the current system works good, should a tornado hit <br />the building, the only data that would be backed up would be for Monday, which means there is not an <br />off-site backup for the rest of the week and so there is a chance of losing some data. <br /> <br />Olson said with a Cloud based system, the data would be backed up through the internet to an off-site <br />location, which would eliminate the need to transfer tapes off site and would eliminate the risk of having <br />to use a tape that is one to six days old. While the tapes have been reliable, there is always the risk of one <br />of the tapes becoming unreadable, and the Cloud based system would eliminate that. <br /> <br />Olson relayed prior to the recent upgrade to a fiber internet connection, bandwidth restrictions made <br />utilizing a Cloud based system impossible. With the fiber connection, the City would be able to increase <br />its bandwidth to better meet its needs. Olson noted if the City were not to increase its bandwidth and <br />chose to go with a Cloud based system, the backup would require the entire bandwidth and would prevent <br />someone such as a police officer from being able to access state data bases. In addition, having a backup <br />that takes four to five hours would increase the risk of something happening during the backup. Olson <br />stated he would recommend increasing the bandwidth up to 100 megabytes. <br /> <br />Olson indicated Staff has looked at different options for service providers, with the annual costs ranging <br />from $6,000 to $10,000. The pricing varied depending on the services provided. Olson stated one of the <br />lower priced options did not encrypt the data and another option was a whole Cloud computing system <br />where Staff could access all of its files from anywhere and work. Olson stated neither of those options <br />are what the City really needs. <br /> <br />Olson stated one option would be to use LOGIS. An advantage of using LOGIS for this service is that the <br />City already contracts with them for the higher level network support. The annual cost for this service <br />would be $8,700 a year, with a one-time startup fee of approximately $6,000. Another advantage to using <br />LOGIS is that they understand BCA requirements and other state requirements. <br /> <br />Levang asked if the one-time costs are mainly equipment or what that would consist of. <br /> <br />Olson stated to his knowledge it is programming and setup on their end. <br /> <br />McMillan asked if the police department would recommend this as well.