iseries Server Cloud Migration Frequently Asked Questions

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1 iseries Server Cloud Migration Frequently Asked Questions 1. What are the advantages of the iseries cloud-hosted environment? Elimination of LEA s costs associated with power, cooling and floor space Elimination of LEA s responsibility and costs associated with iseries hardware and OS updates Servers hosted in a large secure data center 24x7 monitored Nightly backups encrypted and secured off-site Hardware and OS under IBM maintenance contract Redundant systems in different data centers, in year two second data center will be in Charlotte Secure VPN access 24x7 via internet Districts can administer or ask SAS to administer system (add/delete users, printers, allocate resources) Help Desk with tracking OS upgrades and all PTRs on a published schedule Application Software upgrades and Application Support for LEA licensed software available for a nominal yearly fee noted below (or use your current consultants) The iseries cloud will have managed, redundant power and network connections Faster recovery times in the event of a disaster at the LEA central office location Improved physical security of all hosted hardware Managed and monitored firewalls protecting the iseries at SAS Capability to request a temporary iseries partition for testing new software or software releases LEA local Disaster recovery (Hurricane, flood)- use SAS supplied laptop tops and an office in Cary if needed for a nominal fee 2. What is the LEA s cost for this iseries migration to the centralized cloud? NCDPI, through the Race to the Top (RttT) initiative, will cover all costs of the migration to the cloud. An LEA will not be responsible for any migration costs, provided its migration is completed before August 2014 when the RttT federal grant expenditures must be completed. 3. Will my LEA be billed for hosting, and if so will it be more expensive than owning and maintaining iseries server? Each LEA that migrates to the SAS cloud prior to August 2013 will be provided free hosting for 12 months. LEAs that migrate after August 2013 will receive free hosting until August LEAs migrating after August 2014 will not receive any free hosting as RttT federal grant expenditures must be completed by this date. Following the free hosting period, we expect the average LEA will save 50% as compared to the price of owning and maintaining the iseries system at the LEA. This cost savings estimate is based on the required technical personnel to maintain the systems which often include additional external contracted support services, uninterrupted power source cost, annual operating system license renewals and support, plus the cost of replacing the iseries servers on a 3-4 year refresh cycle. Usage data indicates that most iseries systems are greatly underutilized. SAS will provide each LEA an iseries Logical Partition (LPAR) appropriately sized based on past performance and utilization information. The cloud-based systems will dynamically adjust processing power assigned to each LPAR to ensure the cloud provides all users the maximum processing power available. NCDPI and NCSU Friday Institute Page 1

2 4. How much is the cloud infrastructure recurring cost to the LEA? There are 3 LEA size categories: Small, Medium, and Large. A small LEA iseries has up to 100 Gigabytes of current storage utilization A medium LEA iseries up to 500 Gigabytes of current storage utilization A large LEA iseries greater than 500 Gigabytes of current storage utilization Note: 90% of all LEAs fall into the small category Cloud hosting recurring cost is: Small: $ monthly (2 Gigabytes of Random Access Memory) Medium: $ monthly (3 Gigabytes of Random Access Memory) Large: $ monthly (4 Gigabytes of Random Access Memory) Storage is charged at $1.50 per Gigabyte. (The state average is 65GB per server) 65GB X $1.50 = $97.50 monthly Application Layer Configuration Support (Optional choice for the LEA which may choose to retain their current ALCS vendor support) Small: $1,200 Annually Medium: $1,800 Annually Large: $3,600 Annually Small Example: $700 X 12 months = $8,400 ALCS Annual = $1,200 Storage $97.50 X 12 = $1,170 Total Annual Cost = $10, What is included in the Cloud Service Hosting agreement? Infrastructure OS Licensing OS updates System patching Backups: Full System and Incremental Disaster Recovery Security SAS Help Desk Support (3 tiers) 6. Is it mandatory for an LEA to migrate to the Cloud hosted solution? The iseries migration is not mandatory. This is an optional service that a LEA may opt-in for only if it makes sense for the LEA and saves cost. Hopefully in the future all of the financial services applications will move to a new more convenient platform where the cost prohibitive iseries will not be required. If an LEA chooses to opt-out and later decides to Opt-in we will be happy to conduct the migration. However, after August 31, 2014 there may not be any available Race to the Top funding to cover the migration cost. If at any point an LEA is considering buying a replacement iseries server, cloud hosting will be a more cost effective solution. NCDPI and NCSU Friday Institute Page 2

3 7. Some of the current Financial Applications are moving to SQL Server and the LEAs have been told they will have to purchase additional infrastructure. Will this migration support this new infrastructure requirement? SAS is exploring the possibility of supporting this additional hosting requirement and will provide us a SAS decision by November 30, Once decisions are made, the results will be appended to this Frequently Asked Questions document. 8. What happens if an LEA chooses to Opt-Out of the cloud migration and continue to maintain a local iseries Server? When the DPI iseries servers move to the cloud there will be a configuration change required for the Opt-Out LEA iseries server. SAS has developed an in-depth pre and post migration test plan that will be adjusted for each LEA and DPI configuration points to ensure a seamless migration effort. 9. What functions will SAS perform? SAS will perform the Migration, Hosting, and Application Layer Configuration Support (ALCS). SAS is purchasing the hardware and OS licenses from IBM. All centralized systems will run version V6R1 or later. SAS will provide help desk support for the hardware operational aspects of the iseries system. SAS will provide regimented backups of all data on the centralized systems to an environmentally safe and physically secure location, outside of the SAS data center. SAS has AS400 staff expertise that will be engaged throughout the migration process and supporting Help Desk response. SAS will be responsible for maintaining the systems physically, including reliable power, cooling, routine maintenance and hardware failure replacement. DPI will ensure that SAS meets the contract s 99.9% availability and uptime requirements. During the migration, SAS may determine a security audit is prudent and will be performed at no cost to the LEA. SAS will also incorporate the cost of OS upgrades into the hosting fee; no additional OS licenses will be required from LEAs. 10. What functions will NCDPI perform? NCDPI will provide project management services during the migration of LEA services and will provide administrative support as needed. NCDPI will monitor SAS to ensure that all contract obligations and deliverables are met. 11. Will the LEAs be able maintain their current level of control and access privileges to their cloud hosted iseries server partition? Yes, LEAs that currently have admin rights assigned may choose to retain those admin rights for the centralized system. 12. What functions will my LEA perform? Each LEA remains responsible for its day-to-day application processing, the ownership of its data, and the VPN connection from the LEA network to the SAS data center. Each LEA will continue to be responsible for third party product licenses, such as ISIS, Sartox/K12 Industries, Lotus Domino (for HRMS) and any other applications that may be in use. Those applications will be migrated to the centralized server at SAS, but SAS will not provide support for these applications. All 3rd party software products on the iseries will continue to be the responsibility of those product providers. The LEA will be responsible for maintaining software applications above the operating system, such as Lotus Domino (for HRMS) and add-on products such as IBM OnDemand or additional 3rd party products. NCDPI and NCSU Friday Institute Page 3

4 13. What about current LEA Application Layer Configuration support contracts? The LEA may continue any current contract with existing support vendors for Application Layer Configuration Support (ALCS) or end-user help desk agreements until they expire or as long as they desire. However, during the migration the LEA may opt-in for the SAS provided ALCS support at no cost to the LEA. Upon expiration of the LEA current support contracts, the LEA may choose to continue their current support or opt-in for the SAS-contracted firm fixed price for annual ALCS services. The SAS provided ALCS support is optional and completely up to the LEA to choose. However there should be no need to maintain both ALCS services. 14. Will the centralized systems be more secure than my current iseries? Yes. We expect an improvement in the overall LEA-NCDPI security posture as a result of centralization. SAS is a world class technology company with incredible resources available at its Cary facility, and we will all benefit by leveraging its infrastructure. 15. I have custom written iseries applications. Will they be migrated to the SAS centralized systems too? Yes. SAS will work with each LEA, through an interview process, to inventory and migrate each application. If you have custom-written or purchased applications in addition to those which interoperate with NCDPI, please Douglas.McKinney@DPI.NC.GOV so that we can ensure these apps will port properly during the migration. 16. What is the migration plan and how will it affect our end users? BUD, HRMS, (duel entry while migrating etc.?) There is no anticipated need for duel entry; SAS will do a complete iseries site assessment and write a migration & test plan specific to each LEAs migration needs. An MOU between SAS and the LEA will be prepared with the details. If accepted by the LEA a migration date will be agreed upon to do the transition. Example: LEA stops iseries transactions on a Thursday or Friday and SAS will do a full system backup and restore it to the LEA Cloud LPAR on the SAS infrastructure. With coordination between all parties such as network and a comprehensive test plan to ensure everything is 100% operational in the new cloud infrastructure; upon successful testing, the LEA will begin cloud iseries operations Monday with no changes for the user. If the test fails for any reason that cannot be resolved during the migration window; normal operations would resume Monday morning on the current LEA infrastructure. 17. Will all current DPI iseries servers be migrated to the cloud? Yes; however, extensive assessments conducted on the unique complexities of the iseries operations at DPI point to the need for a segmented migration approach rather than an all at once transition as there are 7 LPARS to be migrated and configuration actions that have to be coordinated with network connections at each LEA and the cloud. SAS is currently documenting and testing the network and application migration tasks and configurations associated with this effort. 18. DPI currently maintains their iseries servers applying system patches as well as application upgrades (BUD); will this still occur or will that come back in house to the LEA or be done by SAS? The new cloud infrastructure will be maintained by SAS to include OS licenses and patching etc. The specific applications such as BUD=DPI, will remain the responsibility of the applicable applications owners. For an LEA that chooses to Opt-out of the migration, they would continue to operate as they do today maintaining their systems licenses and support. The application owners (DPI or external) will continue to be responsible for the continued support of their respective application regardless of where the application resides. NCDPI and NCSU Friday Institute Page 4

5 19. DPI currently provides the LEA access during Disaster Recovery (DR) testing? SAS will provide full system and incremental backups and a complete DR plan. SAS would coordinate any disaster recovery testing needs with the LEA. 20. When issues occur who will be providing support? SAS will have a 3 tier help desk with an 800 number call in service; SAS is responsible for the infrastructure & Operating System and will pass trouble tickets to MCNC if on network; If it appears the issue is application specific, the ticket will be handled by the application owner; (Sartox; Isis; HRMS, BUD, etc.). The trouble ticket will remain open until the district concurs that the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction. 21. Is SAS aware of the iseries critical processing schedules? SAS is aware of the processing windows that migrations would not be acceptable such as; month end 25th - 8th and year end 6/15-7/ What if my system needs an OS upgrade or security audit? OS upgrade needs and security audits will be determined during the Site Migration Assessment by SAS and performed during the migration at no cost to the LEA. SAS has been diligently working for the last 4 months collaborating with the application vendors, DPI, and MCNC, to ensure that SAS is prepared with comprehensive pre and post migration task list, and test plans to ensure a seamless transition. NCDPI and NCSU Friday Institute Page 5