The U.S. Department of State, Office of Acquisition Management (AQM), is issuing this Sources Sought Notice, as a means of conducting market research to identify a hyper-converged storage solution that provides a scalable platform for server management and growth. This server solution shall provide the necessary computational and storage capabilities to replace the existing servers and storage. In addition this server solution should provide a simplified plug and play growth capability. This will allow the supporting team to add additional computational or storage capacity as needed. The solution shall virtualize nearly all assets (except for the database) in order to provide a flexible environment with the ability to deploy newly required assets in shorter timeframes. The solution must support the encryption of all data-at-rest, eliminate single points of failure on networking, storage and the database server and provide the ability to do in-place upgrades which will reduce downtime. The proposed server solution shall easily scale in terms of server performance and storage capacity with the addition of more storage or compute nodes. This requirement is for the Department of State (DOS), Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS), Cyber and Technology Security (CTS) Directorate. The results of this request for information will contribute to determining the method of procurement and will assist DOS in developing and further defining procurement and acquisition strategies. The primary North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code assigned to this procurement is 334111. This is NOT a solicitation announcement. No contract will be awarded from this announcement. This request for information does not constitute a request for proposal and does not bind the U.S. Department of State to any agreement, written or implied. Submission of any information to this request for information is purely voluntary. DOS assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred by respondents. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in the response.

Background: The Directorate of Cyber and Technology Security requires a system lifecycle refresh of the current enclaves including storage systems in order to ensure continued service. Currently, the solution's environment is running on server hardware that is two to three generations old across two separate DOS networks. These two networks do not communicate with each other nor does it communicate to the external internet.

Requirement: Hyper-Converged Platform for two (2) different network environments

The proposed acquisition will require that the prospective contractor to provide a solution that has the ability to run both as a hyper-converged model as well as an external storage system model and meets the following requirements:
a. Computes and stores capacity for a 200 TB database - 150 TB database (current size) and 50 TB growth (total over a period of three (3) years - estimated at 10-15% growth) database with:
i. Useable storage that has high availability and redundancy; and
ii. Nodes that must be available in a turnkey scalable configuration.
b. Computes requested capacity per node for 6 nodes/servers with:
i. 1U enclosure;
ii. 2x Intel Xeon 8153 processors or better;
iii. 768GB of LRDIMM system memory or better; and
iv. 4x 250GB (RAID 6) SSD Disks for virtualized and non-virtualized OS platform.
c. Virtualize all hardware assets - except database servers - via a virtualization platform, as follows:
i. 1x VMware vCenter 6.5 license; and
ii. 8x VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus 6.5 licenses; and
iii. Software maintenance to allow for upgrades to newer versions as released.
d. House all hyper-converged hardware (i.e. rack, power strips, and networking) as follows:
i. 1x 42 U Rack
ii. 2x Rack PDUs
iii. 2x High performance and redundant Cisco Nexus switches; 48x 10GB Fixed Ports and 6 x 40/100GB, for the purpose of high speed data/node traffic.
iv. 2x High performance and redundant Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance firewalls
v. 2x Redundant Cisco Catalyst switches; 48 Ethernet Ports and 4x 10GB Uplink Ports, for server management functions
e. Provide Oracle 12c database licensing and support contract purchase capability.
f. Provide centralized management solution of server hardware and virtualized assets.
g. Has certified encryption in order to meet FIPS-140 compliance standards.
h. Has backup capability to address database and virtual infrastructure assets.
i. Supports direct database backups designed and proven for Oracle API
ii. Supports full, incremental and snapshot database backups.
iii. Supports single or multi record database restoration and recovery.
iv. Supports snapshot backups of virtualized assets
v. Supports OS level backups for VMware ESXi.
i. Has AES 256 encryption capability for all data (VM housed) including the database.
j. Has turnkey (rack ready) solution beyond delivery of Hyper-Converged environment.
i. All power and data rack interconnectivity must be fully cabled and appropriately labeled.
k. Provides maintenance and support:

If your company has the capacity to provide the product outlined above, please provide the following information:

1. Company Information:
a. Company name, address, email address, web site address, telephone number, point of contact,
b. Size of business, socio-economic category and certification,
c. Type of ownership (including country of ownership) for the organization,
d. DUNS Number, and
e. Cage Code.
f. All companies responding should have an active System for Award Management (SAM) registration.
g. Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs) or Federal Supply Schedule contracts held by the company.
2. Product Information shall be provided in enough detail for the Government to determine if the product meets the above requirements.

Information Submission Instructions: The deadline for submitting the information requested is April 19th at 12:00 pm Eastern Time and shall be emailed to Jessica Osterberger at [email protected]. The words "Hyper Converged Storage Platform" must appear in the subject line. Responses are limited to ten (10) pages not including cover page and table of contents. Telephone inquiries will not be accepted nor acknowledged. No mail courier responses will be accepted.

Bid Protests Not Available