Event ID: EVT0002670
Page 19
AMENDMENT
October 25, 2013
Addendum Number: 3
Event Number: EVT0002670
Closing Date: October 24, 2013, 2:00PM
November 19, 2013, 2:00PM
Procurement Officer: Greg Davis
Telephone: 785-296-2770
E-Mail Address:
Web Address: http://da.ks.gov/purch
Item: Kansas Private Government Cloud Infrastructure
Agency: Office of Information Technology Services
Conditions:
The bid closing date has been extended to allow time to incorporate the large number of questions.
The answers to the questions can be found below.
There are no other changes at this time.
A signed copy of this Addendum must be submitted with your bid. If your bid response has been returned, submit this Addendum by the closing date indicated above.
I (We) have read and understand this addendum and agree it is a part of my (our) bid response.
NAME OF COMPANY OR FIRM:
SIGNED BY:
TITLE: DATE:
It is the vendor's responsibility to monitor the Procurement and Contract’s website on a regular basis for any changes/addenda.
Questions and Answers
Bid Event EVT0002670
Kansas Private Government Cloud Infrastructure
Q1. Will OITS consider extending the deadline for bid submissions to November 7th 2013?
A1. The bid closing date has been extended to November 19, 2013
Q2. Can a (5) business day extension to the due date of the RFP be granted?
A2. See A1.
Q3. Might the state be open to an extension to the bid due date?
A3. See A1
Q4. Are we permitted to propose overall solutions that, from our experience, will best align with your stated objectives even if slightly different than a few of the technical standards you have referenced?
A4. The Office of Information Technology Services is looking for a proposed solution that meets technical requirements set forth in the RFP. It has been our attempt to make the requirements vendor agnostic. If your proposed solution varies from the technical requirements listed in the RFP please feel free to respond with them and be very clear in explaining your variations and the reason you are proposing different technical requirements. We will evaluate all the responses that are received to find the best solution that meets the combination of our objectives and our technical requirements.
Q5. If a requirement has a 'must' in the description, is a supplier's response disqualified for not meeting any requirement with a 'must'?
A5. Failure to meet all ‘must’ requirements will not automatically disqualify the respondent’s proposed solution. The entire proposal will be considered to find the best solution that meets the combination of our objectives and our technical requirements.
Q6. Do all requirements with a 'prefer' have equal weight or varying weight? If varied can you share that weighting?
A6. There is no weight associated with any individual response.
Q7. Maintenance: What is the required time to replace a failed hardware component?
A7. OITS has not required any specific time to replace a failed hardware component. The time must be consistent to allow for meeting the other requirements of the RFP including but not limited to the availability requirements. Question 4.4.1.6 asks for respondents to provide that answer.
Q8. Maintenance: Does the State have physical storage space available to securely store on-site spares?
A8. Yes. There is a possibility to store on-site spare parts depending on the space required to do so.
Q9. Backup and recovery: Please indicate the current success rate for backups.
A9. The target for the RFP is to provide the Infrastructure needed in order to provide IaaS services to our Agency customers. Backup and Recovery solutions are specifically not in scope for this RFP. As a result, the answer to this question has not been surveyed from our participating agencies and is unknown.
Q10. Backup and recovery: What hardware, software, and network technology is currently used for backup and recovery?
A10. The target for the RFP is to provide the Infrastructure needed in order to provide IaaS services to our Agency customers. Backup and Recovery solutions are specifically not in scope for this RFP. As a result, the answer to this question has not been surveyed from our participating agencies and is unknown.
Q11. Backup and recovery: Please describe your backup and recovery strategy.
A11. The target for the RFP is to provide the Infrastructure needed in order to provide IaaS services to our Agency customers. Backup and Recovery solutions are specifically not in scope for this RFP. As a result, the answer to this question has not been surveyed from our participating agencies and is unknown.
Q12. What applications will be run on storage besides Oracle?
A12. The target for the RFP is to provide the Infrastructure needed in order to provide IaaS services to our Agency customers. In the course of defining the requirements and working with our participating agencies, we have specifically and deliberately not focused on the applications and the workloads associated with the current environment. The workload environment that is outlined in Section 5.1.2 is the most detailed survey of the application portfolio that has been completed statewide to date. We are considering this a mixed workload environment and are looking for a solution that can handle the nature of a mixed workload. The State of Kansas agencies utilize an abundance of applications and services that will be residing on the proposed storage solution.
Q13. How many Oracle databases and what size databases?
A13. The target for the RFP is to provide the Infrastructure needed in order to provide IaaS services to our Agency customers. In the course of defining the requirements and working with our participating agencies, we have specifically and deliberately not focused on the applications and the workloads associated with the current environment. As a result, for this project we have not conducted a comprehensive accounting of all participating agencies Oracle databases and their size.
Q14. What protocol will be used for the application(s) - ISCSI, FC, FCOE?
A14. The State is not determining the protocol that will be used in the solution. This would be dependent on the response.
Q15. What NAS protocols will be used NFS, CIFS?
A15. The State is not determining the protocol that will be used in the solution. This would be dependent on the response.
Q16. For file storage what type of disks are needed? SAS/SSD/SATA
A16. The State is not determining the type of disks included in the infrastructure. The proposed solution should include disks that meet the IOP, redundancy requirements, and other applicable requirements set forth in the RFP.
Q17. How will the Oracle hosts connect to the storage? FC, NFS, or dNFS
A17. The State is not determining how any hosts will connect to the storage in the proposed infrastructure. This would be dependent on the response.
Q18. The State has stated that there are currently 2000 logical servers. How much of the server environment is physical today?
A18. The numbers included in the RFP represent the current logical virtual servers that will targeted for migration into the new Infrastructure Physical servers are not included in this number. There are physical servers in our current environment, but they have not been included in the initial scope as most of the current physical servers and applications have specific reasons why they cannot be virtualized. Over the life of this project, OITS and participating agencies may consider finding a way to either virtualize this system, or do some type of bare metal provisioning on the awarded solution. This is not a requirement, and as such has not been specifically outlined in the RFP requirements and scope.
Q19. Which applications are currently virtualized?
A19. Over the past decade, OITS agencies have virtualized a substantial amount of their infrastructure and applications in their own agency hardware. In the course of defining the requirements and working with our participating agencies, we have specifically and deliberately not focused on the applications and the workloads associated with the current environment. The workload environment that is outlined in Section 4.1.2 is the most detailed survey of the application portfolio that has been completed statewide to date. We are considering this a mixed workload environment and are looking for a solution that can handle the nature of a mixed workload. In some form or fashion just about every application that has been deemed able has been virtualized in the current environments.
Q20. How is storage presented to VM environment?
A20 The State is not determining how the storage will be presented to the VM environment in the new solution. This would be dependent on the response.
Q21. Is SDN (software defined networking) expected as part of the automation solution?
A21. The complete automation strategy is not fully defined. We expect SDN to be a part of our automation solution at this time.
Q22. Can you provide a detailed description, Cisco equipment configurations and drawings for the current network?
A22. The State of Kansas’ Office of the Chief Information Security Officer will not allow this type of information to be published at this time. During negotiations and/or after a contract has been signed network information will be provided if necessary for the successful completion of the project.
The state has implemented a Cisco based hierarchical model comprised of three separate physical layers, Core, Access, and Distribution.
Core layer: This layer is the backbone of the network. This layer of the network does not route traffic at the individual LAN level. No packet manipulation is done by devices in this layer. The primary purpose of this layer is fast and reliable delivery of packets between the summarized agency networks in the State of Kansas infrastructure. This layer has 10GB throughput to the individual agency networks via the Distribution layer.
Distribution layer: This layer includes LAN-based routers and layer 3 switches. This layer ensures that packets are properly routed between subnets and VLANs at the agency level. This layer connects to the core via redundant 10 Gb multimode fiber connections.
Access layer:
This layer connects the agency owned client nodes (PC’s, Servers) to the network. This layer is connected to the Distribution layer via redundant 1 Gb multimode fiber.
General Network Hierarchy
Datacenter Interconnectivity:
The State of Kansas will connect the two cloud specific datacenters using Cisco Nexus 7000 series switches and will provide logical layer 2 connectivity using Cisco Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV).
Q23. Can you provide the additional Cisco components that are expected to be added as part of this project?
A23. Any additional enhancements to our network architecture in support of this project are being completed as a separate project.
At a minimum, we will need to purchase a pair of Nexus 7000 series switches for the Kansas City datacenter. Depending on the result of datacenter connectivity RFP, we will most likely need to purchase additional lower level switching equipment, line cards, and supervisor modules, as well as the miscellaneous parts and pieces hardware required to provide connectivity to these devices.
Q24. On the State of Kansas “Event Details” document, page 2, “General Questions”, the questions listed on the form state: Required, “No”, Mandatory, “No”. Does this mean that the State is not expecting answers to these questions, and vendors are not required to answer these questions? Please clarify.
A24. Please answer all of the questions in the Event Details document. Please do not include the costs on this document as it is to be submitted separately from the Technical proposal.
Q25. Is there a legislative requirement to have a contract for every individual procurement?
A25. For purchases over an agency’s delegated authority, they are to use a contract or come through Procurement and Contract’s office to be bid or otherwise approved.
Section 3.40:
Q26. Section 3.40: Performance Incentives:
C. Upon receipt by Contractor of a Legislative Request pertaining to the Contractor’s responsibilities under the contract, Contractor shall, within two (2) business days, either prove completion of the task, demonstrate substantial progress toward completion of the task, or provide a written justification for the delay and establish the timeframe by which the request will be completed. Contractor agrees and shall pay $2,000 per each business day to the State for Contractor’s failure to respond timely to a Legislative Request and provide the information as requested herein. There shall be a total dollar cap on subsection C performance incentives of $10,000 per Legislative Request. Assessment of performance incentives shall not relieve Contractor of a duty to respond to the Legislative Request.
Should respondents include network ports to integrate any legacy systems?
A26. In the context of performance incentives, OITS is not sure exactly what this question is asking. In general, there have been discussions to reuse some of the more current ‘legacy’ hardware in our environment. That usage will be dependent on the proposed solution. If a part of your solution is a re-use of any legacy systems please make sure that this is outlined and that a complete cost of using those legacy systems are specifically outlined and included in your cost proposal
Q27. With regards to item 3.40C. please define a Legislative Request and the potential types/scope of a request that you may envision on this project? It is difficult to agree to a penalty without understanding the nature of the request, then allowing 2 days for completion.
A27. The project is high-profile and is of great interest of the Kansas Legislature. Specially, the Joint Committee on Information Technology (JCIT) has oversight responsibility over IT projects pursuant to KSA 75-7201 et. Seq.. As a result, there are times that the JCIT asks state agencies and their vendors of services to provide updates and stand for testimony. Additionally, the Legislative Post Audit can use their statutory power to audit agencies and projects. This is not an exhaustive list, but they are the most common legislative requests that OITS normally gets and should be uses as illustrative examples.
Section 3.48:
Q28. Clarification on regarding the Task Order Provisioning Section 3.48 in the State Cloud RFP. I am a little confused here. In the past, once the contract was awarded the Task Order was not needed. The time when a task order was utilized was when several contractors were named on a state contract and a pricing/solution was needed from those listed contractors. Can you explain to me exactly how and when this would be used as part of the contract?
A28. This provision is included to allow for subsequent task orders to be procured if desired. For instance, if additional professional services are needed to migrate agencies or system that are not currently in the scope of the project at a later time, or to buy additional hardware for future growth. This would serve as a contract vehicle to procure those services or hardware.