Maharashtra govt grants nod to shift state data centre to BSNL facility in Mumbai

The Maharashtra government on Thursday granted administrative approval to relocate the Maharashtra State Data Centre MH-SDC to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limiteds BSNL Fort Data Centre in Mumbai under a cage co-location arrangement. Aggarwal in his earlier capacity as principal secretary of IT department some years ago was instrumental in setting up the states data centre in Mumbai.

The Maharashtra government on Thursday granted administrative approval to relocate the Maharashtra State Data Centre (MH-SDC) to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited's (BSNL) Fort Data Centre in Mumbai under a cage co-location arrangement. A Government Resolution (GR) issued by the General Administration Department (IT) said the decision was taken in line with the approval accorded at a meeting of the Information Technology High Power Committee (IT-HPC) held on January 9 chaired by the Chief Secretary. The GR also pointed out that the absence of an independent Disaster Recovery (DR) centre for MH-SDC increases the vulnerability of critical government systems, necessitating its relocation to a public sector undertaking-run cage co-location facility. The MH-SDC, which hosts mission critical applications, portals, databases and services of various state government departments, has been operational for over 12 years. The GR noted that key IT, network, security, power supply and cooling infrastructure at the existing facility have reached End-of-Life (EOL) and End-of-Support (EOS) stages, posing operational, security and business continuity risks. Rajesh Aggarwal, chief secretary of the state told PTI that a similar data centre will commence its operations from Nagpur in next three to four months. It will boost the data hosting capacity of the state by at least 30 per cent and also increase speed of government sites, he said. Explaining the need for such upgradation, he said, ''There are some government web sites which run slow because of heavy traffic to it and comparatively slow servers. With new data centres with enhanced capacity, the sites will run faster where data feeding is going on routinely from departments like revenue.'' Enhanced capacity also benefits the state administration when it comes to running analytics for its policy purpose, Aggarwal said. Aggarwal in his earlier capacity as principal secretary of IT department some years ago was instrumental in setting up the state's data centre in Mumbai. As per the GR, the one-time set-up cost for the new facility will be Rs 36 lakh, while the annual recurring rent has been fixed at Rs 5.8 crore per year for a minimum contract period of five years. BSNL will provide secure cage co-location space along with power supply, cooling and related physical infrastructure at its Fort Data Centre. The procurement, installation, operation and management of servers, storage, network equipment, software and licences will remain the responsibility of the Directorate of Information Technology, Mumbai. The government has also approved expenditure of up to Rs 3 crore for interim hosting, if required during the relocation process. The interim hosting will be undertaken through empanelled service provider Webworks via Maha-IT, it said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)