Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Stimulus fairy wish list

There is a list on my whiteboard. It is the wish list of infrastructure projects I'd really like to see if the stimulus fairy decides to pay WWU a visit. We're higher-ed. And the stimulus bill includes funding for higher-ed. It could happen! Heck, I have two coworkers who are in the Seattle area right now listening to a demo just in case aforementioned fairy does drop by.

Anyway, the wish-list (or Santa! Give me hardware!)
  • 2 more enclosures for the existing EVA6100
  • A new EVA4400 with all eight enclosures
  • HP EVA replication software, so we can mirror the 6100 to the new 4400.
  • Data Protector licensing for everything we need
  • A new tape library, the one we have is creaky
  • New 64-bit servers for the main file-serving cluster
These would make me a happy, happy geek. Said coworkers are working on something else above and beyond these. But I'm not saying what that is. If the fairy does drop by, I will.

However, and there is always one, there is a problem with air-lifting big wads of cash into an IT environment and then spending it all. When it comes time to replace the existing EVA6100, we will have to pay for something equivalent. Since it would have had the EVA replication software on it, it is now about twice as expensive as a simple hardware replacement would suggest. The replication software would quickly become line-of-business with significant future expenses deriving from its purchase.

Maintenance has to be factored in to anything we spend fairy-money on. There is a certain amount of money we can spend on catching up our IT deferred maintenance backlog, like that creaky tape library I just mentioned, but that won't come close to the fairy-money numbers being bandied about. As hard as leaving big piles of cash laying by the side of the road there on the road-side is, there is some money that it is safer not to touch. Such as anything with a yearly maintenance fee. Or version upgrade fees for the upgrade we'll need to do in 3-6 years.

Those organizations who live on grant-money know this very well. However, here at ITS at WWU, other than Student Tech Fee funds we don't live on grant-money. The stimulus-fairy counts as grant money that could leave behind a future liability that STF can't come close to being able to cover.

We'll see what happens.

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