Request for Proposal (RFP) # 1331605-19
TPS is accepting proposals for the provision of a Storage Monitoring Solution.
Submission Requirements
Proposals must be submitted through MERX Electronic Bid Submission (“EBS”) System, the electronic tendering systems used by TPS (https://www.merx.com/).
For assistance in using MERX, please contact MERX directly at 1-800-964-MERX or visit the MERX website at www.merx.com.
Proponents are to submit their proposal through the MERX EBS System prior to 1:00:00 P.M. local time on Thursday October 24, 2019.
Objectives
In order to improve IT service quality and availability, TPS is seeking a solution for storage monitoring, which is vendor agnostic and can retrieve, correlate, store, analyze and report on data for storage operations. This initiative will help TPS to:
- Incorporate forecasting and predictive analysis
- Reduce mean time to repair by real-time root cause analysis
- Increase the overall availability of storage services
- Collect data from existing storage infrastructure, including but not limited to: storage devices and existing monitoring tools and have the capability for data extraction and transformation before loading into solution repository
- Correlate data retrieved from individual storage systems, discover relationships between storage sub-systems, and use the information to build operational intelligence
- Create historical performance and capacity reports for the storage systems
- Set up thresholds for various performance and capacity parameters, including disk I/O utilization, and alerts for when the thresholds are reached.
Mandatory Requirements
General
- The proponent must have practical experience with storage monitoring solution technologies for a minimum of five (5) years.
- The proponent must provide all required components of the solution i.e. hardware (if it’s an appliance) and software etc. required for the POC at no cost to TPS.
- The proponent must provide the professional services necessary to support the POC such as training, project management, development/ integration, installation, etc. at no cost to TPS.
Flexibility
- User interface must be compatible with the current Windows version 10
- The solution must provide alerts, preferably in various forms like text, emails, etc.
- Flexibility receiving alerts; e.g. through text on handheld devices, email, push notification etc.
- Reporting in different output formats; e.g. csv, xlsx, pdf, web version etc.
- Options available for management dashboard / console; e.g. interface available as a thick client, web based or both.
- The solution must provide various recommended maximum and minimum thresholds for monitoring metrics (critical and non-critical) as per best practice.
Maintenance and Support
- Warranty - The proponent warrants for a period of 12 months, as of the final implementation date, that each system component delivered under this contract will fully conform to all mandatory requirements defined in the RFP.
- Warranty - The solution must be free of any major functional and compatibility defects that could impact the TPS’s ability to fully utilize the system.
- Appliance Support - If the solution includes an appliance (hardware or virtual) then it must be supported and maintained by the vendor.
- All logs must be human readable and understandable.
- Software and security updates must be available for the solution.
- The proponent must provide the operational manuals (i.e. runbooks) for the proposed solution.
Solution Architecture
- The solution must be storage vendor agnostic and should be able to integrate with TPS Active Directory to achieve login using AD credentials (Kerberos).
- The solution must provide thorough logging with error and warning messages that include correlating identification numbers to enable troubleshooting from the technical staff where needed.
- The retention period of the audit logs must be configurable within the solution, and allow for up to five (5) years.
- The solution must provide technical support tools for troubleshooting, system configuration and to optimize response times.
- The solution must adhere to TPS technology environment (please refer to Section 3.3).
- The solution must be able to integrate with the existing storage systems and tools with minimal or no customization.
- The proponent must clearly identify component(s) from TPS’s existing technology stack that shall be leveraged as part of their proposal.
- If any special configuration(s) and/or customization(s) will be required, or any additional licencing is deemed necessary for the functioning of the proposed solution, the proponent must identify these within their proposal.
- The desired system requirements for implementing the solution must be well defined.
Monitoring
GUI and Usability
- Dashboard - Must provide access to various content listed
- Health Status - Must provide status of entire SAN/storage environment
- Storage Group Access - Must provide access to storage group via ssh/web
- SAN Group Access - Must provide access to SAN group via ssh/web
- Host Group Access - Must provide access to host group for I/O performance from storage perspective. This can be embedded in storage group
Storage
- Capacity Summary - Must provide total, used and free capacity info for each pool
- Correlated Capacity Information - Must be able to provide capacity information which can be drilled down to host level. For example how much storage is used by the servers in a VMware cluster or physical server.
- Correlated Capacity Information - Must be able to provide capacity information which can be drilled down to application level. For example how much storage is used by an individual application / solution
- Performance - Must display/provide performance metrics.
- System Configuration - Must provide device name, serial number, machine type, I/O group/nodes, drive enclosure, license and firmware code level
- Health Status - Must provide the status within the event list
- Host / Volume Mapping - Must provide host and volume mapping
- History Report - History report must contain pool / mdisk / volume / drive / host information.
SAN
- Health Status - Must provide the status of the switch and ports
- Configuration - Must provide the connectivity info of the port
- CPU/Memory Utilization - Must provide CPU and memory utilization
- Performance - Must display/provide performance metrics.
- Event Log - Must provide event log of the switch and event filtering
Security
- The proposed solution must support role based security.
- The solution must allow for the log information to be used for the generation of audit reports, and these reports to be exported to other file formats.
- The solution must access all the monitoring and capacity information from various systems and tools without reading the storage content.
- Information must be passed across the network using a secure protocol.
Only those firms passing the mandatory requirements will move on to the next stage of evaluation
Term of the Contract
The initial contract term shall be three (3) years, commencing after the successful completion of security background checks of assigned vendor personnel and TPS approvals.
TPS reserves the right to extend the contract for two (2) additional one (1) year periods.
Notwithstanding the above noted, the TPS retains the right to terminate any contract without notice for cause.
The vendor(s) shall not assign or sub-contract any part of this contract to a third party without the prior written approval of TPS.
Piggyback (if applicable)
The TPS may, upon request, permit other publicly funded organizations to purchase against any contract which may result from this RFP.
Proponents are requested to indicate on the Pricing Submission Form if they will extend the pricing, terms and conditions of this proposal to other government agencies, if the proponent is the successful vendor. If the successful vendor agrees to this provision, participating agencies may enter into a contract with the successful vendor for the purchase of the services described herein based on the terms, conditions, prices, and percentages offered by the successful vendor. Minor changes in terms and conditions may be negotiated by participating agencies.
Please note: copies of the proponent’s submission may need to be provided to the interested agency (in confidence) in order to review prior to participating.
Non-Exclusivity
The creation of this RFP shall not be a guarantee of exclusivity.
All in accordance with the requirements stated in the RFP document to be downloaded.
