State officials from Tennessee have announced that it intends to design and construct two data centers some 25 miles apart in northern Nashville and nearby Smyrna, in an investment project worth US$68 million.
The facilities will replace an existing building that houses the State's computer operations, and will be ready by 2010.
The operations are currently housed in a building with a sinking foundation that was built on a flood plain. Sections of the 20-year old data center are shifting are cracking and require constant monitoring. Some are reportedly too weak and unstable to support heavy computer equipment.
The current center houses mainframe computers and computer servers, storage area networks and databases and handles most computer functions for the executive branch.
Mark Bengel, the state's deputy chief information officer, said the state has a contract with a Pennsylvania firm "for disaster recovery for a large portion of our critical systems.
"But there's also a large number of state systems that do not have a disaster recovery capability and those systems would certainly not be able to function, he said, adding that the two new data centers would fix that.
"One of the reasons why we're building two new data centers is to give us a full disaster recovery capability for all critical systems.