The Webster County Board of Supervisors on Aug. 12 approved a $126,422.60 purchase to replace the county’s virtualization environment for its data center, citing end-of-life hardware and expiring vendor support.

County IT Director Andrew McGill said the county’s current servers and storage, bought in 2017, are past expected life, leaving the county unable to upgrade its virtualization platform and at risk because of expiring warranties. “We got bought them back in 2017. So, getting, warranties for them anymore, they're basically in their life. Our storage server, which has all our data is end of warrant or end of life too,” McGill said.

The purchase is a one-time payment that covers three years, McGill said; after that the county will pay maintenance costs. McGill told the board the county solicited quotes from three vendors (DataVision, Heartland Business Systems, and Scale/SHI) and chose the Scale-based solution because of future licensing costs and management considerations. “So we decided to go a different route and scale,” McGill said. He said the new system will consolidate servers and increase storage capacity and that the county typically expects such systems to last about six years.

IT system administrator Joe Anson, who helped test products, praised McGill’s review and testing process. “There’s been we went through about 5 or 6 products We did. In about 4 months and a lot of conversations, a lot of demos, a lot of tests,” Anson said, adding that the county will reduce its server footprint and licensing burden.

Board members voiced no objections and the motion to approve the quote and authorize the chair to sign carried unanimously.

The board did not record projected maintenance costs beyond the three-year purchase term at the meeting; McGill said annual maintenance costs will apply after the initial three years. The county’s stated reason for the purchase was to maintain vendor support, address security flaws and reduce overall long-term licensing expenses.