KEY POINTS:
The secretive intelligence-gathering agency behind the Waihopai spy base, the Government Communications Security Bureau, is undertaking a major IT upgrade.
The GCSB's technology overhaul will boost its capacity for storing digital information and reduce its susceptibility to losing data if disaster strikes.
The GCSB has told IT vendors it wants to buy and install dual storage area networks (Sans) at its Wellington headquarters and at the spy base near Blenheim.
In a "request for proposal" document circulated to technology vendors last week, the agency says its new storage network needs to consolidate its existing infrastructure of Solaris, Linux and Windows-based data servers, bringing them together in a "virtualised" environment using technology from leading global virtualisation company VMware.
Virtualisation is an increasingly popular trend in corporate IT circles. It allows organisations to make more effective use of their networks by enabling computing and storage capacity on any individual server to be available across the entire network.
Using virtualisation, an organisation with storage capacity at two or more sites can more easily back up and switch data between sites, meaning it is less likely to lose information if disaster strikes one location.
The GCSB's request for proposal document cites enhanced data protection and data availability, and a "readied approach" to data duplication and disaster recovery as key objectives for its storage upgrade.
Its thinking is in line with that of a growing number of businesses now using data centres at two or more locations as insurance against the impact of a disaster. An example is Ports of Auckland, which uses VMWare to switch information between its two data centres, located 1.8km apart at either end of Auckland's sprawling port facility.
"From a DR [disaster recovery] perspective, we've got a lot of comfort there," Ports of Auckland IT operations manager Daren Wiseman told a media briefing in January.
The GCSB says it requires at least 4 terabytes (4000 gigabytes) of storage on its network initially but expects to grow its storage requirements by 20 terabytes a year and needs a network capable of allowing for growth up to at least 80 terabytes.
The GCSB's role is to intercept communications for foreign intelligence purposes. It is forbidden by law to monitor or record domestic communications.
Because of the secretive nature of the GCSB's work, it is not known exactly what type of data it stores, however IT storage experts told Connect the agency's 20 terabytes-a-year requirements were fairly typical of the storage needs of many medium-to-large organisations.
The GCSB hit the headlines this year when three peace activists allegedly cut through security fences at the Waihopai base and used sickles to slash a protective rubberised dome housing one of two satellite receivers at the facility.
The agency received a funding boost in last week's Budget: from $40.3 million last year to $48.9 million.
Given the nature of the agency's work, IT vendor companies wishing to do business with it need to provide a list of their staff who have Government security clearance and must agree not to publicise anything to do with the request for proposal process.
While the winning contractor will be responsible for installing the San in the GCSB's Wellington headquarters, the agency's own staff will install the new storage equipment destined for the top-secret Waihopai site.
SECRETIVE STORAGE
* The GCSB expects to store up to 20 terabytes of data a year over the next three to five years.
* A terabyte (equal to 1000 gigabytes or a million megabytes) would be enough storage to archive many millions of intercepted emails.
* The US Library of Congress has been archiving websites since 2004. By May last year it had stored 70 terabytes of data.
* According to Wikipedia, YouTube holds over 45 terabytes of user-submitted videos.
