Tassie Govt deploys unified virtualisation

The Tasmanian government has standardised its entire server farm architecture on a single virtualisation platform thanks to a deal struck with VMware.

The contract follows a tender launched late last year for a single server virtualisation platform to potentially replace the government's 125 single user licenses.

Department of Premier and Cabinet business development manager Ian Scott said the deal is expected to produce significant savings.

"As a government dedicated to green initiatives, the environmental benefits which will be realised as a result of VMware virtualization are enormous," he said.

"The decision to standardise on VMware Infrastructure is in line with our commitment to cut the environmental impact of our government activities."

The VMware Infrastructure 3 platform will be deployed over a mix of Dell, Sun, IBM and HP Intel-based servers. The servers share a SAN through a mixture of iSCSI and fibre-channel access.

The software will run over Windows, NetWare, Solaris and Linux and training will be included in the contract.

Alphawest will provide services and support for the virtualization project.

The contract is expected to conclude in March 2011.

— with Rodney Gedda