Government of Zimbabwe

MINISTRY OF HIGHER & TERTIARY EDUCATION, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

HEAD OFFICE

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

INFORMAL TENDER FOR:

Supply, Delivery and Installation

Of

HIGH PERFOMANCE COMPUTER (HPC) STORAGE SOLUTION

COMPILED BY MHTESTD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Technical Specifications

General Mandatory Requirements

Bid Bond

Instructions to Tenderers

Terms and Conditions

Method of Evaluation

Tender Procedure

1

1.INTRODUCTION

1.1.This RFP was prepared bythe Ministry of Higher & Tertiary Education Science and Technology Development (MHTESTD) and is being offered to suppliers on the clear understanding that its contents are strictly confidential and may not be disclosed to any third party without prior written permission of MHTESTD.

1.2.This document is a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Supply, Delivery and Installation of HPC Storage Solution for the Ministry of Higher & Tertiary Education, Science & Technology Development (MHTESTD) at the Zimbabwe Centre for High Performance Computing subsequently referred to as ZCHPC.

1.3.The ZCHPC is a research institution that operates under the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development and it is located at University of Zimbabwe, Mt Pleasant Harare. The ZCHPC is a national HPC Centre facility that host a 36 Teraflops supercomputing infrastructure. The supercomputer is used for advanced scientific research in different domains such as science, engineering and business.

1.4.TheZCHPC currently operates a 1660-cores,1952G memory Intel-based Linux cluster (running RHEL) from the vendor Inspur Group of China based on Lustre filesystem and 4 Graphic Nodes installed in early 2014, it comprises 100 regular compute nodes, all connected by a QDR InfiniBand fabric. In addition, a parallel storage system (from NetApp) provides 60TB of usable storage capacity and about 5 GB/s of aggregate read throughput through 8Gb/s Fiber channel connected to object storage server OSS serving QDR InfiniBand. We employ Adaptive Computing-Moab as our resource manager and batch scheduler. The system workload is mixed, but significant usage comes from applications like WRF, TauDEM, Gromacs, Gaussian 09, Cp2k, VASP and Lammps. Other users employ packages such as Fluent, Ansys, Abaqus and Matlab, and a few run their own codes. Our usage over the last 6 months has seen significant growth in large (128+ core) MPI jobs.

1.5.The Ministry intends to expand the ZCHPC storage capacity by 1PB with 30% allocated to scratch and 70% allocated to remote Enterprise user backup storage where:

1. Scratch must accommodate a wide variety of user computing needs for current and future research activities. In general, we anticipate using the scratch for the handling of various application data from such applications as WRF, MATLAB, Gaussian, etc.
2. The scratch storage will also host a number of tools and suites for HPC code development, such as those from Intel, PGI, TotalView, and others from the open source community. An integrated Storage billing system is required for charging users based on capacity usage.
3. The backup solution to make use of our required capacity for such kind of backup/archive activities not limited to applications from the selected customers.
4. Backup solution must provide filesystem Gateway: a powerful gateway to a vast range of storage technologies and CLOUD, a future-proof solution for the long-term retention needs of an enterprise level data repository.
5. Software for billing storage clients based on capacity usage should also be part of the backup solution.
6. Backup software for both the clients and ZCHPC administration that allows automation through policies.
7. Compliance requirements in this RFP are features, components, performance characteristics, or other properties that are essential to our needs; a vendor must satisfactorily propose all such requirements in order to have its proposal considered responsive. The vendor may discuss additional system features and characteristics it believes may be of value to ZCHPC. If ZCHPC agrees, consideration may be given to them in the evaluation process.

2.THE TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

2.1.In terms of the storage requirements the vendor must connect this storage to our existing HPC cluster using up to 4 ports in the old cluster’s InfiniBand fabric QDR from Mellanox and one Rack with 42U to be provided to accommodate the space. The configuration that must be proposed for the storage system; with at least 11.0 GB/s and in general, storage solutions providing higher density may be preferable due to rack space considerations. Backup Solution should be proposed based on having 0.7PB Storage of capacity as a backup/archive target and need to extend capability to backup/archive all sort of applications whether it is HPC data or Enterprise data.

2.2.The minimum specifications for the solution are tabulated in the compliance sheet below:

1. Pre-installation – this is to be done at an environment where the vendor provided a similar solution
2. Post-installation- this is to be done at the ZCHPC site

3.GENERAL MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS

3.1.Tenderers are required to pay a non-refundable fee of USD10.00 for the RFP that will be issued at MHTESTD.

3.2.Tenderers must submit their Company's profile, CR 14(local companies) and Certificate of incorporation and International Players must provide relevant company registration documentation. The bidder must have been incorporated for two years or more. Those with less than two years will not be accepted.

3.3.Tenderers must provide full references and this reference information provided shall include at least the following:

1. Name of the client
2. Contact person from that organization in charge of the project (name, title, telephone number and e- mail address of this person).
3. Explain in general terms what was provided
4. Provide the number of years your company has been in business, Type of business structure (sole-proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or other), number of employees within the company and annual sales volume company wide.
5. Is your company currently in default on any loan agreement or financing agreement with any bank, financial institution, or other entity? If yes, specify date(s), circumstances, and prospects for resolution.
6. Is your company currently for sale or involved in any transaction to expand or to become acquired by another business entity? If yes, please explain the impact both in organizational and directional terms.
7. A bid validity period of 90 days should be stated. Failure to state Bid Validity period will lead to automatic disqualification.
8. Bid must be registered with ZIMRA. Bidders must submit proof of Registration with ZIMRA in the form of valid Tax Clearance Certificate or VAT Registration Certificate. 10% withholding Tax shall be applied for foreign bidders.

4.BID BOND

4.1.Option 1

4.1.1.Tenders must provide a Bid Bond of 2.5% of tender value up to a maximum of US$5,000 (for local bidders) or 10% (for international bidders) endorsed by a registered Commercial Bank to MHTESTD when submitting their tender. This is to cover MHTESTD in case the supplier withdraws the bid after submission, or is unable to honour his/her proposal after award of tender.

4.1.2.Please note: that the required Bid Bond should include the following features in order for it to be considered valid:-

a)Letter head of a registered Commercial Bank (i.e. the Supplier of the Bid Bond/Surety).

b)The Header to clearly state that it is a Bid Security Bond.

c)Purpose of the Bid Bond to be clearly stated.

d)The date when the Common Seal of the said Surety was effected to be stated.

e)Conditions of the said Obligation to be stated.

f)The physical address of the Surety to be stated.

g)A bid bond validity of 90 days is required and must be clearly stated.

h)Signature of Surety and the date when it was endorsed to be clearly shown.

i)It must be an original document and date stamped.

NB:Bonds from Insurance Companies, Building Societies, Insurance Brokers and Stock Brokers will not be accepted

4.1.3.The Bid Bonds of the unsuccessful bidders will be released immediately after award of Tender while that of the winning bidder will only be released after submission of the Performance Bond.

4.2.Option 2

4.2.1.Payment of a non-refundable bid security of US$280.00 (for local bidders) or US$750.00 (for international bidders) payable to the State Procurement Board. Attach the original receipt to the bid as proof of payment.

4.2.2.After award of the tender, and before the contract is signed, the winning bidder must produce an adequate form of security acceptable to MHTESTD to guarantee that the work will be continued in case of failure of performance by the supplier, i.e. in the event of delay in the delivery of the goods or failure to meet performance requirements, including latent defects. This guarantee will be in the form of a Performance Bond equivalent to the value of 10% of the total cost of the supplier's proposal, valid for the period of the contract and endorsed by a registered Commercial Bank.

4.2.3.Bidders must bid for only one option, that is, multiple options will not be allowed for this tender. Where options are registered, only the first option shall be considered.

4.2.4.Bidders must submit proof of dealership arrangement with the manufacturer.

NB:Failure to meet mandatory requirements will lead to automatic disqualification.

5.INSTRUCTIONS TO TENDERERS

5.1. RESPONSES FORMAT

i.Supplier’s response must have a contents page to facilitate ease of reference to information submitted.

ii.Responses to this RFP should be in the form of paragraphs numbered with the same numbers as the original statements/instructions and/or repeat the text of the statements/instructions.

5.2.TECHNICAL INFORMATION FORMAT

5.2.1.Please give full details of the following in line with the requested technical specifications and solution requirement:

1. Proposed Hardware;
2. Technical Support;

5.2.2.For Proposed Hardware and Software:

5.2.2.1.Please give full details ofStorage Solution: (See full minimum requirements in line with the technical specification compliance sheet in section 2).For any other hardware:

1. Manufacturer and model;
2. Performance characteristics

5.2.3.For Technical support: Please give full details of:

1. Availability of telephone support;
2. Guaranteed response time ;
3. Fault escalation procedure.

5.3.DELIVERY FORMAT

5.3.1.Please specify maximum delivery lead time;