Mumbai, February 12 The Maharashtra government granted administrative approval on Thursday to relocate the Maharashtra State Data Centre (MH-SDC) to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited's (BSNL) Fort Data Centre in Mumbai under a cage co-location arrangement.
A Government Resolution (GR) issued by the General Administration Department (IT) stated that the decision was taken in line with the approval accorded at a meeting of the Information Technology High Power Committee (IT-HPC) held on January 9, chaired by the Chief Secretary.
The GR also pointed out that the absence of an independent Disaster Recovery (DR) centre for MH-SDC increases the vulnerability of critical government systems, necessitating its relocation to a public sector undertaking-run cage co-location facility.
The MH-SDC, which hosts mission-critical applications, portals, databases, and services of various state government departments, has been operational for over 12 years.
The GR noted that key IT, network, security, power supply, and cooling infrastructure at the existing facility have reached End-of-Life (EOL) and End-of-Support (EOS) stages, posing operational, security, and business continuity risks.
Rajesh Aggarwal, the state's Chief Secretary, told PTI that a similar data centre will commence operations from Nagpur in the next three to four months.
He said this will boost the state's data hosting capacity by at least 30 per cent and also increase the speed of government websites.
Explaining the need for such an upgrade, he said, "There are some government websites that run slowly due to heavy traffic and comparatively slow servers. With new data centers with enhanced capacity, these websites will run faster, especially as data is routinely fed into them from departments like revenue."
Enhanced capacity also benefits the state administration when it comes to running analytics for its policy purposes, Aggarwal said.
Aggarwal, in his previous role as Principal Secretary of the IT department, was instrumental in setting up the state's data center in Mumbai.
According to the GR, the one-time setup cost for the new facility will be Rs 36 lakh, while the annual recurring rent has been fixed at Rs 5.8 crore per year for a minimum contract period of five years.
BSNL will provide secure cage co-location space along with power supply, cooling, and related physical infrastructure at its Fort Data Centre.
The procurement, installation, operation, and management of servers, storage, network equipment, software, and licenses will remain the responsibility of the Directorate of Information Technology, Mumbai.
The government has also approved expenditure of up to Rs 3 crore for interim hosting, if required during the relocation process.
The interim hosting will be undertaken through empanelled service provider Webworks via Maha-IT, it said.
