addendum 1 september 22, 2015 request for … · request for proposals: data center implementation...

ADDENDUM 1 September 22, 2015

Request for Proposals: Data Center Implementation

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Following are the questions submitted on or before September 18, 2015, in accordance with RFP specifications. All questions are published verbatim as received, without regard to errors in spelling, punctuation, or grammar, in order to avoid misrepresenting any submission. Responses to questions, clarifications of material, or corrections are indicated in green after each question.

From Pre-Proposal Conference, held September 16, 2015:

1. Please confirm that no bid bond is needed.

City Response: No Bid Bond is needed. Please refer to the RFP for the other requirements on general certifications.

2. Is a Certificate of Insurance needed with the bidder, or just the selected vendor?

City Response: Proposer is required to provide it, if awarded.

3. On the section 1.4.5 - Backup Media and Catalogs. The section requires the Catalogs importable and searchable. There may not be a good way to combine the old and new solution. Will the City be retaining the old and new solutions?

City Response: Catalog imports to a proposed system are preferred. However, the City can maintain the old solution if needed until the City’s backup hold period expires. City intends to move forward with the solution that provides the best value.

4. Regarding the VMware licensing for the City, do the vendors need to buy new licenses or does the City have existing licenses? If so, please define the number of licenses and type for vendors to be able to be accurate on the VMware license.

City Response: City holds a basic license, please see page 9 for current licensing details.

5. Does the City prefer fiber channel or ISCSI.

City Response: No preference. Currently there are no fabric switches installed.

6. Regarding the existing Core Data Switch, it is advisable for the City to move to a 10G switch. Is there any interest to move toward a 10G core?

City Response: Not at this time. The City will be maintaining the existing 1G switch equipment. See page 10 for full model inventory on core switch.

7. Just to confirm, the connectivity from virtual to core is 1G; correct?

City Response: Yes, that is correct. City wants to keep it 1G or better.

8. There are many ways to propose that results and ranges of offerings and costs. Are the vendors allowed to propose multiple approaches?

City Response: Yes, vendors can propose multiple approaches.



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9. How many Current system users?

City Response: 345 users. All are SQL users.

10. Does the City have a brand/product preference?

City Response: No preference for a vendor brand.

11. Is there a preference to support a certain SLA?

City Response: The City does not define service-level agreements. The City does support three sections that are 24x7.

12. Does the City have a DR plan formalized? Will the development of a DR Plan be an outcome of the project?

City Response: No, there is no formalized DR Plan. Yes, likely a DR Plan will be formalized.

13. Regarding DR Plan, is there a priority list for services?

City Response: Yes. Please refer to the RFP.

14. Current IOPS needs: We calculate the need for 9700 IOPS. Are we to provide the 6-year target number upfront, or grow-able from 9700 as the initial baseline?

Currently, the IOPS are not a bottleneck. The data storage is the City’s largest concern. Calculate as an initial number of 10K. Address potential for growth through hardware expansion as an option. See additional chart on page 11.

15. Just to confirm, is it out of scope for the selected vendor to be required to migrate the existing servers to new OS?

City Response: No instances to migrate existing OS to new. That would be out of scope.

16. 1.4.6 - DR Requirements: Does the City require end-to-end encryption? In transfer and at rest also? Is there a specific standard?

City Response: In transit is required however, if offered, at rest should be included as an optional cost. Minimum requirements for encryption would be 1024, and 2048 is desirable.

17. For encryption, what bit factor do you want?

City Response: See #16. The City would look to the vendors to provide a proposal using best practices.

18. Is there a geographic limit or requirement for services?

City Response: Limited to USA with geographic diversity.

19. Is it the intent of the City to fully retire all the old equipment, including the SAN?

City Response: Yes.



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20. CJIS Data: Is the City looking for on-premise back up that could push to the cloud? Are you looking for a specific product to comply with that?

City Response: Yes, please refer to the RFP.

21. Does the City have a formal data retention policy?

City Response: No formal policy yet. Please refer to the RFP.

22. Can a vendor propose a solution without hardware?

City Response: It is not preferred.

From written questions submitted:

23. Do you have any preferences either FOR or AGAINST a particular brand of hardware?

City Response: See #10.

24. Do you have a preference for the Cloud piece as far as the cloud hosting your own hardware or Arkansas Attorney General not having to own the DR/Cloud hardware?

City Response: Please refer to the RFP.

25. pg. 8; As far as Encryption, must it be Data at Rest as well as on the fly?

City Response: See #16

26. Is networking hardware to be limited to only the Server/Storage side and NOT the Core or Distribution?

City Response: See #6

27. Do new Racks and all of their associated items (ex. PDU’s, KB/video tray, KVM) be included or will you use existing Racks on premise?

City Response: Racks and all associated items will be provided by the City.

28. Are UPS’ needed for the new solution or can you give us spec’s on what kind of power your existing can supply?

City Response: The City will be responsible for power requirements for the selected solution. Proposal should indicate what is needed.

29. pg. 8 Section 1.4.2; In regards to Automatic Tiering, what percent of the min 20TB useable do you expect to need Performance disk and what percent is Capacity Disk?

City Response: The City anticipates approximately 5 – 10 % however, the proposal should indicate a vendor recommendation.



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30. Will you accept multiple scenario’s i.e. Best practices proposal and a second that could be a different manufacturer comparable. Basically have two manufacturers proposals?


31. What type of termination is provided for the Dark Fiber between the sites and from you ISP?

City Response: The City currently does not hold any agreement with its Internet provider for dark fiber.

32. pg. 10; “Solution should provide Migration tools for existing Data Sets”, Please define this a bit more.


33. pg. 10; “Must BU to Multiple Storage Devices & Media Types”, could you give us an example for multiple media types/Storage devices?

City Response: Examples would include disk, tape, and cloud storage.

34. pg. 19 1.6.6 Current SAN; Is FC (2Gb or 4Gb) the current connection type?

City Response: The current SAN connection is Fibre Channel 2 Gb.

35. Is the current performance levels to End Users Excellent, Satisfactory, or Slow.

City Response: Satisfactory

36. What networking infrastructure do you currently have in place today, is it 1Gb or 10Gb? If it is 1Gb, is there plan to upgrade to 10Gb?


37. Do you currently have a dedicated line for your internet connection? What is the connectivity and speed you have today, and are there any plans to upgrade?

City Response: The current primary Internet connection is a fiber 40Mb synchronous connection. A Secondary Internet connection exists that is Business Class, 20 Mb down. This fiscal year, it is anticipated to add an additional fiber Internet connection at the Public Safety building for redundancy. It is desired that the proposal outline bandwidth recommendations for the proposed solution.

38. What is change rate like for current data set per daily, weekly, or monthly?

City Response: The City does not have that data.

39. In the Proposal Assumptions, it is indicated that the City will provide power, rack space, and network connectivity for all devices. For the network connectivity portion, can we assume that 1Gbps Ethernet switches will be provided? Or will 10Gbps Ethernet be provided? Or should the proposer provide all switching components required for the solution?




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40. Is there a secondary site that the City can leverage for Disaster Recovery? Or is there only 1 site and they are looking solely at cloud for DR?

City Response: For the purpose of this RFP, the City is looking solely at a Cloud solution.

41. Will the Village be providing all required Microsoft OS licensing and CALs? If not, please provide a list of licensing requirements. ?

City Response: Additional licensing over existing will need to be proposed by the vendor.

42. What is the RPO (Response Time Objective) and RTO (Responsive Time Objective) for bringing-up services after a disaster is declared?


43. You mentioned your current environment is “oversaturated”. Can you give some specific examples of what you are experiencing so we can make sure to address those issues?

City Response: Oversaturation is in reference to current data storage capacity.

44. It appears that you have (4) servers with VMware 4.1. Is the support current on the ESX servers and vCenter?


45. Can you provide more detailed information on the IOPS chart (fig 1.6.1)? The IOPS are mentioned on Table 1.6.6. It appears the total IOPS for the environment is 9,720. We just wanted to make sure this was the correct number to use in our analysis. ?


46. How many servers do you need to back up?


47. What kind of data are you backing up? (databases, files or audio/video)__________________________


48. How much data do you need to protect between all of your servers? ____________________________


49. How Many Media servers are you planning to have? _________________________________________




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50. How many tape devices if any? How many read/write heads in each tape device? (if they do not know get make/ model)_____________________________________________________________________

City Response: Tape device replacement is not preferable.

51. Does your SAN or NAS use NDMP protocol? YES or NO

City Response: Current does not.

52. How many servers are physical (standalone servers)?_________________________________________


53. What is running on each Physical server? Operating system & Applications EX… windows 2008 w/ active directory? (fill out on page 2)


54. Do you have Virtual Host machines (VMware or Hyper-V)? YES or NO


55. How many physical CPU’s are in each virtual host machine, & how many cores in each CPU?


56. What is the required SAN connectivity? 10G iSCSI or 16G FC?

City Response: The City is not providing a requirement and requests the proposer to provide a recommendation for an upgrade path depending on media.

57. Should the SAN support include all future new software features for the duration of the support term?


58. The proposed SAN must have dual controllers for high availability, is that correct?

City Response: The City requests the proposer to provide a recommendation in their proposal.

59. Should the SAN solution have included management software? Should it present a single view of all storage assets accessible via the cloud from any device, along with detailed information about storage performance, capacity, volumes, snapshots and replication, user-defined alerts, and support cases?


60. Should the SAN experience zero downtime for SW upgrades, disk expansion, disk replacement, controller replacement?




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61. Should future performance be unaffected as capacity grows to reached 50%, 75%, 90%?


62. Should snapshots be instantly accessed for data recovery or utility?


63. Should the SAN be operational during system firmware upgrade while continuing to serve data?


64. Should the storage solution interact with support remotely and automatically to simplify the customer experience (i.e. auto-support, dial home, remote access)?


65. Should the SAN management software alleviate site admins form collecting and or transmitting logs to support for troubleshooting?


66. Can Backup Exec be re-used for this project? If yes, can you please supply a list of Backup Exec licenses?


67. Table 1.6.6 lists the current IOPS requirement per server and 20% additional growth per year for 6 years is specified. The math works out to 29,020 IOPS. Is that the amount of IOPS that must be delivered by the SAN on the initial purchase? Or would you want optional pricing to show what it would cost to start at 9720 IOPS to start (as shown in table 1.6.6), and then move up to 29,020?


68. Should the SAN include data encryption with the solution software feature set / licensing?

City Response: Please include as an optional cost.

69. Should the SAN include cloning, snapshots (per LUN), and / or replication with the solution software feature set / licensing?


70. Should the SAN include compression with the solution feature set / licensing?


71. On page 9, 1.4.4, Regarding connectivity to the SAN, do you have a preference for FC or iSCSI?




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72. We are assuming 35 virtual guest servers means 35 Virtual Machines. Please confirm.

City Response: Yes.

73. Regarding a minimum of 90 logical processors dedicated for virtual guest servers, do you mean in example, 1 10core cpu with Hyperthreading = 20 logical cores?

City Response: Yes.

74. I don’t see any references to your core switching environment. Do you have switch ports available for the SAN and Servers? Are they 1gbe or 10gbe, SFP+ or copper? Would you like additional switches for the SAN/Server environment?




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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT OF ADDENDA

The Addenda to the Specifications have been received and have been considered in response to this Request for Proposals:

1. Date:

2. Date:

3. Date:

addendum 1 september 22, 2015 request for … · request for proposals: data center implementation...

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