The Deputy Chief Minister of Sarawak, YB Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr George Chan Hong Nam, who is also the Chairman of SAINS, is on hand to launch the newly renovated SAINS Data Centre at Wisma Bapa Malaysia, Petra Jaya, Kuching, today.

The SAINS Data Centre is the first of its kind in Sarawak to offer ICT infrastructure outsourcing services to both the public and private sectors. This Data Centre facility project took 2 years to build at a cost close to RM10 million. With the presence of SAINS Data Centre located in East Malaysia, the Government and Commercial sectors in the State of Sarawak can now enjoy affordable ICT infrastructure outsourcing service, readily available and close by.

For those new to the concept, Data Centre is a dedicated and highly secured facility to provide end-to-end ICT resources and services such as applications and database servers, data storage systems, and data network communications equipment. The structure is also carefully designed and laid out to have a complete environment and security control, protected against fire and interruptions in power supply, and armed with round-the-clock intelligent security surveillance and access control systems.

The facility comes equipped with a separate power supply system, extensive Uninterrupted Power Supply or UPS (with N + 1 redundancy) and dedicated backup generator set for enhanced power management. The Centre also has Precision Air-Conditioning (PAC) system (with N + 1 redundancy) for temperature and humidity monitoring and control. This includes a water detection system to monitor and detect water leakage at all time. The design of the Data Centre also includes fire detection and suppression system with highly sensitive smoke detection and non-toxic gas for fire suppression.

For most business entity, ICT is expensive to own and sustain as a competitive advantage for business profitability. With the economy of scale and the investment consolidation, the Data Centre can offer organisations that wish to leverage on ICT, for their everyday business dealings and tasks, a lower cost model.

With the wide outsourcing experience of SAINS, users can depend on tested and proven processes and procedures to ensure the smooth running of data centre operations and managed hosting services. Users also benefit from cost control, which means no surprises and no costly downtime because they get what they pay for - maybe more, but never less.

The facility is handled by SAINS’ ready pool of experienced engineers and administrators 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These personnel are kept up-to-date with the technology developments relevant to organisation’s business needs.

With SAINS focusing on organisations’ technology infrastructure, users can focus on their business and core competencies - respond quickly to customers’ needs, competitive pressures and increased demand for capacity and performance. In other words, rather than channelling valuable resources to building, deploying and managing their organisation’s technology infrastructure, they can leave the uncharted technological territories to a tried and trusted technology partner.

SAINS Data Centre provides various core services to suit organisations business needs and requirements. The Enterprise Server and Storage for Business Applications service offers a one-stop, end-to-end enterprise servers and storage from multi-vendor hardware and storage technology to day-to-day operations and maintenance.

The Data Backup and Restoration Management service provides scheduled data backup, data restoration in the event of disaster, and offsite tape media storage. This service ties up with the need to ensure Business Recovery and Continuity in the event of a disaster. However, the speed of recovery depends on the users. For fastest recovery, organisations are encouraged to use online or near line replication of data to a live fail-over site to enable recovery in between minutes to hours. A less expensive method involves a stand-by server with identical business applications installed to allow restoration from offsite tape media so that organisations can recover in between hours to days. The least expensive is by providing a secure place for offsite tape media. Recovery using this method depends on hardware availability, time to set up applications and restores data; restoration can take place ranging from between days to weeks.

The Data Centre facility also provides 24x7 Call Centre and Network Monitoring which involves non-stop customer service and round-the-clock network monitoring. Whenever there is a need, SAINS will allocate a team of trained professionals to inspect, detect, repair and resolve for users’ benefits.

Apart from that, other services are Systems and Desktop Management and Business Applications Sharing and Hosting Services. The Systems and Desktop Management handles software updates, such as anti-virus for desktops and handle mass software distribution across the network for corporate use and monitors performance and fault management services for servers and databases at remote sites. Meanwhile, the Business Applications Sharing and Hosting Services allow users to share SAINS’ readily available business applications or they can opt to have their own applications hosted by SAINS at the facility. These services also come with operations, monitoring and maintenance management.

The physical size of the facility is over 250 square metres, including the extended power distribution room. The current space at the Data Centre can accommodate about 180 servers with a total of 700-800 processors at any one time. Additional space is allocated for expansion in the future. Meanwhile, the disk storage capacity is about 100 terabyte (TB) at current disk profile.

To date, the Centre housed about 80 servers that run the application systems used by the State Government offices and departments State wide. Examples are the Leave Management System (LMS), Sarawak Monitor for development projects monitoring, e-Recruitment for jobs in the State Government, Email Messaging and Directory services and many more.

SAINS has also developed applications for e-government services to the public and hosted at the Data Centre. Some examples are MyOneStopSarawak (www.emoss.com.my) for all Sarawak Government e-services to the public, PayBills Malaysia (www.paybillsmalaysia.com), ANGKASA library solution for a one-stop access to all public libraries and resource centres in the State (www.librarynet.com.my), and Sarawak Interactive Digital Road Atlas (SIDRA) accessible via http://sidra.sarawaknet.gov.my