1331605-19 - Storage Monitoring Solution

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• 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

• 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.