CACI Acquires ID Technologies – Learn More
As an IT partner to the United States federal government, we deliver technological solutions that are flexible and sustainable. The Maryland National Guard needed a scalable IT system that was familiar to current staff and easy to manage for minimally trained new hires to accommodate high turnover rates. An RFI was issued and we designed a solution based on vSAN, a storage virtualization software that combines storage and computing for virtual machines into a single device. We were able to speak with the IT decision makers for the MD National Guard and identify major issues with system management. We await the release of the actual RFP.
Our solution provided a system that has intuitive management interfaces and excellent initial implementation documentation. We explained the documentation and implementation approach that ID Tec would take, which was very well received by the MD National Guard. Our goal is to offer soft services that are low cost with high value. Ultimately, ID Tec provided the MD National Guard with a VMware and HCI system that provides critical scalability to accommodate future requirements and is easy for the IT department to manage with minimally trained staff.
The Maryland National Guard needed to update its storage platform requiring a storage capacity of 100TBs. The Guard also needed several VMware servers replaced, making hyper convergence infrastructure (HCI), a software-defined infrastructure that virtualizes the system’s components, an attractive option. We identified ease-of-management as the central area of opportunity. The Guard’s administrative staff was primarily comprised of Guard members, leading to high turnover and an unstable IT team with limited experience managing current systems. After identifying the main problem, we responded to the Maryland National Guard’s RFI with a proposal based on vSAN.
Our customer-centric implementation and documentation approach addressed issues created by the Guard’s frequently changing and inexperienced IT administrative staff. We listened to the customer, probed with additional questions, and provided a short but detailed proposal mapping the technology components to the customer’s requirements and associated benefits. Our documentation provided instructions on all common system management operations, sources for the latest tech bulletins and patches, as well as the process and numbers for tech support, etc. The proposal was independent of OEMs, highlighting our subject matter expertise.
We provided the Maryland National Guard with a technological solution design based on hardware and VMware software the IT staff is familiar with. Our solution provided necessary scalability through the vSAN based HCI system designed to meet their current CPU/memory/storage requirements.
The system has one primary interface – the VMware’s vCenter. It is based on many discrete parts including industry standard servers, NVMe drives, vSAN software from VMware, ESXi software from VMware, and industry standard switches for connectivity. Our solution allows the Maryland National Guard’s IT staff to spend 95% of their time in one software tool, managing all of the day-to-day functions through vCenter. The flexibility to buy what is needed today and the scalability needed to grow to any size necessary over time made our solution a safe investment.
The Maryland National Guard now has an optimized system that provides critical scalability to accommodate future requirements and is user-friendly as well as sustainable for the IT department to manage with minimally trained staff.
