Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Question 498: To ask the Minister for Defence the number of computer servers that are leased by his Department and each State agency under the aegis of his Department; and the amount of capacity on each server; the cost of maintaining these servers and the steps being taken to reduce this cost; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35510/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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In total there are three (3) computer servers leased by the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces as follows: Two (2) servers are leased by the Department, both of which have a capacity of 50GB. No maintenance costs are associated with these servers. One (1) server is leased by the Defence Forces with a capacity of 4GB. No maintenance costs are associated with this server. No computer servers are leased by agencies under the aegis of the Department of Defence.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Question 499: To ask the Minister for Defence the number of computer servers that are owned by his Department and each State agency under his aegis; the amount of capacity on each server; the cost of maintaining these servers; the steps being taken to reduce this cost; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35526/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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The use of computer servers in my Department , the Defence Forces and the Office of the Ombudsman for the Defence Forces is spread over a number of mainstream applications, including Local and Wide Area Networks, business, administrative and financial systems, web hosting, mission-critical support systems and a wide range of local and specialist applications. The capacity varies according to need. The following is a summary of the position:

Department of Defence, including integrated civil/military modules

The Department owns a total of 90 servers. The storage capacity varies from 20GB(gigabyte) to 3.6TB (terabyte; 1 TB=1000GB) per server. The average cost of maintaining these servers is approximately €282 per server per annum. This comprises the hardware warranty and support costs for the servers.

Defence Forces – military only applications

The Defence Forces own a total of 126 servers. The storage capacity varies from 33.8GB to 750GB per server. Since 2006 maintenance costs for 5 years are included in the initial purchase price for all new servers.

Ombudsman for the Defence Forces (ODF)

The ODF owns 2 servers each of which has a capacity of 150GB. The average cost of maintaining these servers is approximately €2,850 per server per annum. The maintenance of these servers includes the provision of the following services; domain and security administration, backup support, log file monitoring, performance monitoring, account management, patch management and network administration. The ODF, in order to move to a more robust and economic server environment, intends to complete the process of procuring, installing and migrating to a single new server before the end of 2011.

The Department and the Defence Forces are examining ways, including server virtualisation, to minimise the number of servers required in order to achieve savings in server procurement and to reduce energy usage. In addition, the number of servers required will be reduced as a result of an upgrading of financial management and HR systems currently under way.