Online casualties: NZ Defence Force websites now deemed unrecoverable

Failed NZ Defence Force websites are unrecoverable. Photo / NZDF

NZ Defence Force websites are down and, like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, they are never coming back.

Over the weekend, the NZDF confirmed a technical snafu had taken out its online presence.

"A hardware failure affected storage at one of our data centres, which has meant the NZDF, Navy, Army and Air Force websites have been inaccessible since earlier this week," an NZDF spokeswoman told the Herald.

The amateur blogging site Medium.com is being used to host Army, Navy and Air Force sites while a fix is under way and the NZDF worked with the unnamed vendor involved.

But now, the NZDF has waved the white flag on its efforts to find that fix.

"We are treating the legacy sites as unrecoverable," the spokeswoman updated this afternoon.

"Work is currently under way to get an interim web presence in place while options for a longer-term solution are being considered.

In the meantime, "Affected URLs are currently directing visitors to our Defence Careers website. That site has a brief message about the outage," the spokeswoman said.

The message directs visitors to medium.com/@nzdefenceforce for NZDF information beyond recruiting.

The outage has lasted since July 27.

It affected a storage array and automatic failover was not available, the spokeswoman said.

"NZDF has a number of information initiatives being evaluated for funding. Our online presence and associated infrastructure is part of this," she added.

Microsoft and Datacom were originally selected, in 2018, to provide a proof of concept cloud-based platform for NZDF to help inform a more detailed investment case and strategy.

Cabinet recently approved modernisation of NZDF's core IT infrastructure, based on an Enterprise Cloud Capability. This is being undertaken in partnership with Microsoft.

A GCSB insider told the Herald that there was no hint of foul play involved in the NZDF outages.

But he added, "It's just not a good look."

An IT industry figure with both army and intelligence community experience said, "The NZDF websites have been running on aged CMS [content management system] for a long time. The crash will be because of the refusal to invest."

He added, "This has been a looming issue for a long time."