ACCC to refresh mid-range server fleet

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will shortly replace the ageing Dell hardware in portions of its mid-range server fleet, following its five-year refresh cycle.

The regulator is responsible for ensuring compliance with federal competition, fair trading and consumer protection laws. It had around 519 staff as at 30 June this year.

At present, the ACCC maintains a number of mid-range Dell servers located in offices around the country, providing file and print (Novell 6.5) and collaboration (Microsoft Exchange 2003) services to staff.

Other machines located in Canberra provide a range of corporate and middleware applications, as well as performing network-related functions.

At least 14 of the machines providing file/print/collaboration services will shortly be disposed of, with the ACCC going to market this week for a minimum of 21 new servers based on Intel's dual-core Pentium Xeon processors, running at 3Ghz or above.

The existing servers are understood to have reached the end of their useful life within the organisation, although several machines will be redeployed from Melbourne and Sydney to the ACCC's Canberra office.

The ACCC has outsourced support for all of its infrastructure services, service desk and database services to local integrator Exceed, which is part of the ASG group of companies.

The regulator will start rolling out the new hardware between February and April, with an expectation that the project be largely completed by early May.

The ACCC has also recently gone to market for a refresh of its 290 strong desktop PC fleet, also specifying the use of Intel's dual-core processors. That contract has not yet been awarded.