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IT director seeks June 2 budget amendment to buy servers now, warns of steep price and lead-time increases
Summary
Director of IT asked council to approve a June 2 budget amendment to purchase Nutanix server hardware and related backups now, citing vendor warnings of rising prices and extended delivery times; quotes show a $500,000 estimate and risk of further increases.
Kevin Carter Smith, the city's IT director, briefed the council on imminent end-of-life for core server hardware and outlined two major purchases he will bring to the June 2 meeting: replacement Nutanix server arrays (to downsize and maintain redundancy) and warm-backup hardware.
"The quotes came back at $500,000," Carter said, describing how last-year estimates and supply shortages have pushed prices higher and why staff wants to lock a quote before vendors increase prices or lead times extend further. He said vendors recommended a seven-year life cycle for the hardware and cautioned that delays could mean price increases of 30–60 percent based on market signals.
Carter explained the technical tradeoffs (cores, memory and storage capacity) and described the city's backup strategy (warm backups for quick recovery and cold archival storage). He said the purchases would be presented as a June 2 budget amendment to avoid the higher costs and long delivery windows expected later in the year.
