Enterprise Storage Services

Overview

The Enterprise Storage Services consists of centrally located secure storage that is tuned and presented to centrally managed servers, application software and individual workstations (clients) as network attached drives.  This service is offered to the Executive Branch.

  • A standardized, dependable cost effective storage environment that meets the business’s needs
  • Steady predictable costs
  • Enterprise monitoring from a single location
  • Reporting and alerting capabilities
  • MaineIT maintains up-to-date software and hardware to support this service
  • Additional services or levels of support are available if the user needs require them
  • Compression (known as deduplication in EMC storage terms) of user shares home drives, which takes place behind the scenes and reduces the file size by creating reference points to existing documents with the same text, then saving only the new text in the file; from the user’s perspective, no changes will be visible
  • Tiering of user shares home drives, which reduces storage costs by moving files that have not been accessed for more than 1 year to a different server, at a lower storage rate, and leaving only a shortcut on the primary server; from the user’s perspective, no changes will be visible

Included

  • Highly available storage devices (using internal hardware redundancy)
  • Customized Storage Area Networks (SANs)
    • Fiber Channel Switch Management
  • Network Attached Storage (NAS) configurations to meet your business and performance needs
    • 1 day checkpoint storage on user share home directories used for faster user files recovery
  • Network connection(s)
  • Facilities management (secure datacenter, UPS, generators, HVAC)
  • Storage hardware procurement and management
  • Storage hardware and software system support
  • Patch management of storage devices
  • Proactive storage monitoring, alerting and reporting
  • On-site storage engineers
  • Secured storage enclosures in State of Maine datacenters
  • Deduplication, better known as compression is part of base rate for user share home directories
  • Once a year tiering is part of base rate for user share home directories.  This moves users shares that have not been access in over a year to a low-cost storage option.
  • Support to the server hosting team for patching/upgrading OS and OS-provided software/applications on a quarterly basis
  • Storage systems are hosted in secure datacenters with cooling units, uninterruptible power supplies and backup power generators
  • On-Call coverage is available for production break/fix 24x7

Excluded

  • Local server disks
  • Local disks on client machines

Service Level Targets & Availability

  • The standard production published service level agreement can be viewed at the following link: Standard_SLA CTS Production Services; a formal SLA has not been developed for this service
  • Standard business hour coverage is 7:00AM – 5:00PM Monday through Friday, excluding holidays, please contact MaineIT Operations
  • If service is required for non-production systems outside of the standard business hours, prior arrangements will be required with the director of this service area and associated fees apply

Service Rates: Please see the MaineIT Rate Table 

Options Available for Additional Charge

These additional options require advanced planning with the Enterprise Storage team.

  • Real time full copies using snap/mirroring and cloning technologies
  • Cross-site Network Attached Storage (NAS) replication
  • Archiving options (Tier2)
    • User Home Archives
    • Tiering for other than user share home directories
    • Static data based Application Shares
  • Project Based Resource Services
  • Research & Development
  • Specific audit requirements, responding to audit questionnaires, development and implementation of security remediation’s or compensating controls for specific audits
  • De-duplications options for other than user share home directories
  • Any services for PaaS and/or IaaS hosted systems (performance monitoring/interruptions of monitoring reports/troubleshooting/security services/audits etc)

Customer Expectations

Related to this service include assuring that  

  • Individual users follow state IT use rules and policies, including all security policies
  • A contact person and backup are designated to interface with the MaineIT team
  • Any issues or problems with this service are reported to the MaineIT team as promptly and with as complete information as is feasible
  • Ability to stay current with software used in the Enterprise Storage offering

To get help or order this service:

  • Call MaineIT Service Center at 624-7700
  • Enter a Footprints service request assigned to the Enterprise Storage team
  • For application projects (new projects or major enhancements or upgrades), contact the MaineIT Project Resource Office (PRO) to get started
  • Footprints ticket are required for all work requests.  All work requests must have a required RFC or Footprints ticket and if applicable, a bill code will be required for those items that are not part of the base published rate