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SAMDAILY.US - ISSUE OF APRIL 01, 2020 SAM #6698
SOURCES SOUGHT

70 -- VistA Imaging IRP Priority #4 (RFI Only) (VA-20-00031010)

Notice Date
3/30/2020 4:51:08 AM
 
Notice Type
Sources Sought
 
NAICS
541512 — Computer Systems Design Services
 
Contracting Office
TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION CENTER NJ (36C10B) EATONTOWN NJ 07724 USA
 
ZIP Code
07724
 
Solicitation Number
36C10B20Q0186
 
Response Due
4/13/2020 12:00:00 AM
 
Archive Date
07/21/2020
 
Point of Contact
Jessica.Adamitis@va.gov
 
E-Mail Address
jessica.adamitis@va.gov
(jessica.adamitis@va.gov)
 
Awardee
null
 
Description
Page 8 of 8 Amendment 0002 hereby extends the response due date to close of business April 13, 2020. All other information remains unchanged. Request for Information Infrastructure as a Managed Service (IaaMS) Introduction: This is a Request for Information (RFI) only issued for conducting market research. Accordingly, this RFI constitutes neither a Request for Quote (RFQ) nor a guarantee that one will be issued by the Government in the future; furthermore, it does not commit the Government to contract for any services described herein. Do not submit a Quote/Proposal. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is not, at this time, seeking proposals or quotes, and therefore, will not accept, review, or evaluate unsolicited proposals or quotes received in response hereto. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted because of this request. The Government does not reimburse respondents for any costs associated with submission of the information being requested or reimburse expenses incurred for responses to this RFI. The information provided may be used by VA in developing its acquisition strategy and Performance Work Statement (PWS). Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary; however, any information received shall become the property of the Government and will not be returned to the respondent. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response. This is a request for information and does not obligate the Government in any way, nor does it commit the Government to any specific course of action. Requirement: VA Information Technology Operations and Service (ITOPS), has a requirement for a managed service solution (MSS) for storage, compute, and network infrastructure at facilities across the United States and abroad. The MSS will allow VA to deploy storage and computer infrastructure when and where it is needed. The contract will be leveraged to move VA toward a standardized service delivery model that eliminates application-specific infrastructure silos, leverages cloud-based storage capabilities, and implements industry best practices for storage in geographically dispersed facilities. The VA intends to utilize this contract to replace several discrete architectures over the period of performance. The total addressable storage in the VA is in excess of 140 petabytes. Additionally, VA seeks a flexible contract that incorporates technical insertion capability, permitting the addition of new storage, compute, and networking technologies and incorporating updated pricing over the course of the contract lifecycle. VA intends to use this contract as a single source for infrastructure modernization procurements across disparate applications, use cases, and business units. ****The attached draft Performance Work Statement describes the effort. **** Post RFI Review Phase VA envisions that once RFI responses are reviewed, select responders may be invited to provide a face-to-face or telephonic briefing to VA personnel to answer additional questions with respect to the response given. VA retains sole discretion of whether any post RFI briefings are warranted and which industry partners may be invited to provide additional market research information. Responses: Questions are requested to be submitted by March 25, 2020 at 12:00PM ET. All questions shall be submitted to Contract Specialist Jessica.Adamitis@va.gov. Please submit the below requested information by close of business April 13, 2020. Responses shall be limited to 50 pages. VA reserves the right to not respond to any, all, or select responses or materials submitted. All VA current requirements identified herein are subject to change at any time. If you have questions on the PWS or the technical requirements, please submit all questions via email. If you experience any problems concerning this announcement, please contact Contract Specialist Jessica.Adamitis@va.gov. VA appreciates your time and anticipated response. As an appendix to your response, not subject to the 50-page limit, provide any publicly available industry RFQ documentation (federal or commercial) that attempted to implement a seat management or provisioning-as-a-service operational capability that you are aware of. The appendix may include copies of publicly available RFQs, or may simply be links to publicly available information, or a description of the acquisition activity and point of contact information at the company or agency in question that the VA may contact to obtain further information. As part of your RFI response, please provide the following information: Capability Statement Please submit a capability statement describing your company s ability to meet the overall concept described above and the questions below. Additionally, please consider the additional information and questions provided throughout the attached PWS, attachments, and associated device technical specifications. If your firm has previously responded to NASA SEWP RFI #119804 you may skip questions 1 through 4. Include the following identification information Company name CAGE/DUNS number under which the company is registered in SAM/VetBiz.gov Company address Point of contact name Telephone number E-mail address Identify existing contract vehicles (NASA SEWP V GWAC, GSA, etc.) in which you are a contract holder that can be utilized to procure these services. With respect to the subject effort, would you be the prime contractor? As the Prime Contractor, what tasks describe above or detailed further as part of the white paper would your company perform? Please describe your teaming arrangement. If a small business, what type of small business are you? Are you able to comply with FAR 52.219-6 and 52.219-14 in execution of this effort? Are you able to comply with VAAR 852.219-10, VA Notice of Total Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Set-Aside and with subcontracting limitations in 13 CFR 125.6 in execution of this effort? What experience does your organization have at providing similar services of size and scope to other Federal agencies and/or industry? For Federal awards provide contract number and agency points of contacts. Has the attached draft PWS provided enough detail to describe the technical requirements that encompass the services to be performed under this effort. ______ YES _______ NO (if No, answer question 7) If NO , please provide your technical comments/recommendations on elements of the draft PWS that may contribute to a more accurate quote/proposal submission and efficient, cost effective effort. Please reference PWS by sections or line numbers in your response. General In our draft PWS, VA is asking for consumption-based billing on used capacity. Please explain if this is in alignment with industry norm, and if not, what you believe the industry norm is. Optional: Please suggest any specific SLAs that VA should include in the PWS. For any SLA you propose, please provide what metrics the contractor should meet and how the metric should be monitored and evaluated. In a subsequent RFQ, can you provide environmental data for your solution at each facility, including rack unit spaces, kilowatts, and heat output? If you are able to provide any of that data as part of the RFI we would appreciate reviewing it. Following a catastrophic event that required the replacement of the underlying hardware, how would you propose billing VA for the lost hardware? Following the replacement of lost hardware, how would you propose charging for a one-time ingress of data back from the cloud using a physical data shipment? If the RFI were converted to an RFQ as written, is your solution unable to meet any existing specifications? Should VA consider removing, altering, or adding any specifications? Please reference specific line and section numbers in your response. Please describe the nature of training you intend to provide to the VA. Please provide specific class titles, type of training materials and instructional methods utilized, levels and length of training for each course. The government will consider committing to maintaining capacity for a specified period of time post-installation. How would different commitment periods (e.g. 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years) impact pricing? How do you propose to compensate VA for outages that exceed the SLA, assuming the outage is not caused by VA? The Government intends to tie payments of certain tasks to the performance against established Key Performance Indicators (KPI)/Service Level Agreements (SLA). If Contractor performance falls below required service level thresholds, the Contractor shall only be paid for the lower service level provided. KPIs/SLAs and associated service levels will be indicated. The Government is seeking industry feedback on this method to ensure KPIs/SLAs are appropriately achieved. STORAGE Please describe the Storage Resource Management (SRM) platform you will provide with your solution. Does your platform incorporate deduplication? Is deduplication performed by the client side or the solution? Is deduplication performed inline as data is written, or after the initial write has occurred? Does data remain deduplicated throughout the lifecycle, or does it need to be rehydrated at some point? Is the scope of deduplication local, global, or something in between? Does your platform incorporate compression? Is compression performed inline as data is written, or after the initial write has occurred? Is your compression methodology lossless? Does your platform incorporate data compaction? Does your platform incorporate thin provisioning? What is the maximum number of sites that can participate in a single contiguous global namespace? If the system at one facility reaches maximum capacity, can it redirect write traffic to a neighboring facility? Is this functionality seamless to the end user s application? What is the maximum number of objects that can be stored in a single contiguous global namespace? What is the maximum usable data capacity that can be stored in a single contiguous global namespace? What is the largest existing customer on this platform? How many objects are they storing in a single contiguous namespace? How much data by capacity? How many physically discrete locations are participating in the namespace? If VA is willing to commit to a minimum usable capacity at each physical location, what is the minimum usable capacity suggested? How would this impact pricing? If the VA increased the VistA Imaging read request response time from 15 to 30 seconds, how would this impact solution pricing? SECURITY Does the entire management stack support Active Directory-integrated authentication? Does it support cross-domain Active Directory authentication? Does the entire management stack support multi-factor authentication (MFA)? If MFA is partially supported, please enumerate which elements do not support MFA. Does the entire management stack support secure multitenancy? If secure multitenancy is partially supported, please enumerate which elements do not support secure multitenancy. How would the proposed solution protect against ransomware, viruses, and other malicious activity? Does encryption at rest interfere with data efficiency outcomes, including deduplication efficiency? How would your solution implement key management for cryptographic keys? For a given dataset, does the solution use a single key for encryption, or does the key change periodically? Can the solution use an external key management system? Could the system integrate with an existing VA key management solution? At present, the PWS does not include specific requirements for parity, erasure coding, or local replication. How does your solution guarantee the integrity and availability of data within each local solution? At present, the PWS does not include specific requirements for hot spare disks. Please describe how your solution implements hot spares. At present, the PWS does not include specific requirements for node redundancy. If a single node or controller fails, can your solution continue to meet the performance and availability requirements within the PWS? INSTALLATION VA will require installation of hardware at additional facilities to be determined over the course of the POP. How do you propose to price installation services at RFQ for facilities that are not included in the base? Which organization would be performing the physical installation of hardware? Does this organization have experience with large-scale, multi-site hardware installations within the VA? If so, please provide examples of previous work. Which organization will perform onsite break-fix work (e.g. replacing failed hardware)? Does this organization have experience with large-scale, multi-site hardware installations within the VA? If so, please provide examples of previous work. From the date of award, how much time will it take to complete installation and configuration of the solution? How much time will it take to complete data migration from the existing environment? Please describe your organization s integration facilities. How will you build and ship pre-built racks? Some VA facilities may not be able to offer contiguous rack space for expansion hardware. Can your solution facilitate non-contiguous rack placement for expansion hardware? If there is a limitation of less than 250 feet between non-contiguous racks, what is the limiting factor (e.g. SAS cabling)? What is the maximum distance supported by that limiting factor? Are you willing to take possession of the existing legacy hardware (without storage media) in exchange for a service credit? CLOUD CAPABILITIES At RFQ, will you be able to provide facility-specific bandwidth requirements for post-ingestion data replication, based on VA-provided replication schedules and growth rates? For WAN-constrained sites that cannot reliably replicate daily changes across the WAN, how do you propose to provide an offsite copy of data for disaster recovery purposes? How would you price the option? VA will provide cloud-based compute and storage resources to support offsite replication. Please provide a detailed inventory of the storage resources (including capacities and tiers) and compute resources (including instance types and quantities) required for your proposed solution. VA intends to utilize Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure to provision cloud-based storage and compute resources to support this project. Is there a benefit of using one of these platforms versus the other for your solution? VA seeks write-one, ready-many (WORM) functionality to protect cloud-based copies of VistA Imaging data from accidental or malicious deletion or alteration. How will you provide this functionality? What is required to turn WORM capability on/off for a given dataset?
 
Web Link
SAM.gov Permalink
(https://beta.sam.gov/opp/aaa8d066e93740648137714b8b232c1b/view)
 
Record
SN05604925-F 20200401/200330230150 (samdaily.us)
 
Source
SAM.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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