SOURCES SOUGHT
70 -- SSA Network Load Balancer Replacement Project (LBRP1)
- Notice Date
- 2/10/2009
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 334210
— Telephone Apparatus Manufacturing
- Contracting Office
- Social Security Administration, Office of Budget, Finance, and Management, Office of Acquisition and Grants, 1st Floor, Rear Entrance, 7111 Security Blvd., Baltimore, Maryland, 21244
- ZIP Code
- 21244
- Solicitation Number
- SSA-RFI-LBRP1
- Archive Date
- 3/10/2009
- Point of Contact
- Christopher D Mettee,, Phone: 410-965-9486
- E-Mail Address
-
christopher.mettee@ssa.gov
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- The Social Security Administrations (SSA), Office of Acquisition and Grants (OAG), in conjunction with its customer, the Office of Telecommunications and Systems Operations (OTSO) Division of Network Engineering (DNE), is currently performing market research on load balancing network technologies. SSA has a contract for Alteon load balancing hardware that expires in August 2009. SSA is seeking information from interested sources regarding the availability of load balancing network technologies and its compatibility within SSAs network. Synopsis of Terms and Conditions: This is a sources sought announcement, a market survey for written information only. This is not a solicitation announcement for proposals and the Government will not award a contract from this announcement. The Government will not reimburse for any costs associated with providing information in response to this announcement or any follow-up information requests. The Government will not accept any telephone calls requesting a bid package or solicitation. There is no bid package or solicitation. In order to protect the procurement integrity of any future procurement, if any, that may arise from this announcement; the Government will not give information regarding the technical point of contact. The Government will not make appointments for presentations. This synopsis is for planning purposes only, not a commitment by the Government. SSA currently has 60 Nortel Application Switch Model 2424 load balancers in production and development environments. SSA's enterprise applications, web-based applications, and client server based applications need to be available 24x7; the server load balancing solution must enable high availability by distributing the load across multiple servers configured with the same content/application in an efficient manner. Current physical architecture utilizes a pair of load balancers for each redundant switch pair. The load balancers are connected via trunk ports to the switches, and traffic between servers is managed directly on the switch itself. SSA requests information about products that can meet the following requirements: Physical Requirements o Redundant power option, or ability to cluster in 1 Power Supply Unit (PSU) sized appliances. o Rack-mountable in standard 19 rack mounts o Redundant link capability. o Preferred options: Redundant key components- i.e. Fan modules, PSU o 100/1000/10000 Ethernet support o 120/220v AC 3-phase support Configuration/Network Requirements: o Active-Active & Active/Standby configurations o Global Server Load Balancing aware/capable, including across geographically separate locations using advanced load balancing metrics like round robin, geography, network preference, bandwidth utilization, round trip time, least connections, QoS, etc to distribute load across sites. o Failover between devices should be automatic w/o human intervention o Component/Software failure in one device should not take down other clustered device. o VIP (Virtual Internet Protocol (IP)) failure independence. o Protocol supported: - Standard Protocols for High Available (HA), Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP) Virtual Redundancy Router Protocol (VRRP) Virtual Mac (VMAC). - Preferred: Server/Application State Protocol (SASP) - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) - Secure HTTP (HTTPS) - 802.1 support 802.1d Support and Rapid Spanning Tree (802.1w) 802.1Q Trunking 802.1P Quality of Service (QOS) Link Access Control Protocol (802.3ad) - Etherchannel support - Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) - Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Support. - Firewall/Proxy LB - Real Time/Streaming Protocols - Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) support for code/configuration upgrades. o Configuration synchronization between peer devices. o Failover without human intervention o Advanced Layer 7 scripting capabilities o Layer 4-7 load balancing support o Advanced Uniform Resource Locator (URL) inspection/routing caching server, etc. o Multiple load-balancing metrics options (Round-robin, least connections, bandwidth, utilization, response time, etc.) o Application awareness (XML, Oracle, SAP, IBM Web Sphere, etc.) o Web acceleration using compression and SSL offload. o Virtualization capabilities to allow provisioning and management of logically separate load balancing environments Management Requirements: o Configuration synchronization between peer devices o Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) support (all versions) o Ability to administer multiple devices from central location/console - Command Line Interface (CLI) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) - Out of Band connectivity (console, or Out of Band net connection) - Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) & Secure Shell (SSH) support. - Console software allowing the ability to monitor and manage Logical Block Addressing (LBA) from a remote workstation, as well as provide overall device management/monitoring remotely. o Built-in logging, reports, and statistics of appliance health and server performance. Electronic Security Requirements o Role based access control/ACL o Preferred: Support for Terminal Access Controller Access Control System (TACACS)/Authentication, Authorization, Accounting (AAA)/Radius support. o Denial of Service (DOS) attack prevention and blocking of other attack and exploitation techniques. Performance Requirements o Maintain 1 million concurrent sessions without impacting end user performance. o Ability to handle more than a gigabit per second of traffic at wire speed o SSL offload / Acceleration o Stateful packet inspection Other Requirements o 24x7 support with response time of 1 hour or less for support calls, and 4 hour or less for hardware repair/replacement. Support Engineers must be able to articulate clearly using English language and provide a return to service time of 8 hours or less. o SSA requires access to product development to resolve case escalations and discuss bug reports/fix requests o The Contractor must provide design/architecture review support o Hands-on training classes for both hardware and software installation, maintenance, and troubleshooting o Product roadmap and detailed life cycle information (minimum 7 years) o Onsite implementation support via vendor-provided implementation/technical engineer. o Provide monthly site visits by advanced technical personnel to provide assistance and support. This is not a request for proposal, therefore SSA will not honor or respond to written and/or verbal requests for copies of a solicitation, or other information related to this announcement. SSA will use this information in their assessment of capable sources. Interested sources that believe they have the ability to perform the solution and services required should submit a detailed statement of their capabilities in writing, including technical sheets, to Christopher Mettee, Contract Specialist, Division of Information Technology and Maintenance, 7111 Security Boulevard, 1st Floor Rear Entrance, Baltimore, MD 21244. SSA will accept responses submitted electronically via email at Christopher.Mettee@ssa.gov. Please reference SSA-RFI-LBRP1 in the email subject line. SSA must receive all responses by February 23, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
- Web Link
-
FedBizOpps Complete View
(https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=4fa3efe1567129a1ea9c7d205b589ca8&tab=core&_cview=1)
- Place of Performance
- Address: 6201 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, Maryland, 21235, United States
- Zip Code: 21235
- Zip Code: 21235
- Record
- SN01747499-W 20090212/090210215718-4fa3efe1567129a1ea9c7d205b589ca8 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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