Attachment_1_GGITS_Current_Operating_Environment.pdf

Attachment 1:

Current Technical Overview

Grants.gov Information Technology Services

Technical Overview

Grants.gov provides applicants the ability to search and apply for grant programs, processes the incoming applications, and makes them available to the agencies. It also provides agencies the ability to manage opportunities and submissions for Federal grants. The below diagram provides a simplified view of the Grants.gov logical software architecture.

Grants.gov Architecture Design represents a typical J2EE Three-tier Architecture, where the development approach is using both Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) along with open source frameworks. Our architectural principle is to make the COTS products easily replaceable following the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) model, and to reuse rather than recreate.

Technical Context

Grants.gov is a Java/JEE application running on WebLogic Application Server, Oracle Database, and Solaris servers. Two key components are the Solr Search Engine (used to enable users to find grant opportunities) and the Adobe LiveCycle Forms Server engine (used to process submitted grant application forms). Major components of the system and its environment are depicted below.

Figure 1-1 Grants.gov System Components

The Grants.gov program owns the equipment and software for the Grants.gov production, test/DR, staging, and training environments. The development environment, including servers and development tools, is the responsibility of the contractor, although decommissioned production servers have been made available by the program to support development activities. The system is currently hosted at an Equinix facility in Ashburn, VA; with a backup site hosted in an Experis facility in Middletown, VA.

F ir ew al l + L o ad

B al an ce r

System-to-System Interfaces Windows Linux

Unix Mac

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Applicant S2S

Agency S2S

Grantor

Grantee

DUNS

SAM

CFDA

Agency download of completed application

System-to-System Application Submission

Agency User Interface to Grants.gov

Opportunities Management

User Management

Downloading of completed applications

Applicant User Interface to Grants.gov

Find Opportunities

Create Login Check Submission

Downloading of opportunities

Application Submission

Apply Process

Separation of attachments and XML schema

Virus scan of attachments

Validation of XML

Packaging of application for agency submission

Adobe LiveCycle Forms Server

Authentication Service

SUN Servers + SAN + VPN Server + Email Server

RSS Feed

Oracle Database Server

Solr Search Engine

BEA WebLogic Server

Liferay

Technical Summary

The following table includes software technology used by Grants.gov:

Product Category Description Adobe LiveCycle ES4 SP2 Assembler

Forms Processing Adds standard footer to flat PDFs stored in submission Zip file

Adobe LiveCycle ES4 SP2 Designer

Forms Development

Create and Modify XDPs for Forms Development

Adobe LiveCycle ES4 SP2 Forms Server

Forms Processing Generate a stitched PDF using Family coversheet and form XDPs and XML files.

Adobe LiveCycle ES4 SP2 Output

Forms Processing Generates flat PDFs using XDPs and submission XML which are stored in the submission Zip file (for non-FIF or FIF without FO)

Adobe LiveCycle ES4 SP2 Reader Extension

Forms Processing Set the form usage rights for the stitched

PDF

Apache Tomcat 7 Application Server Application server used by Liferay and

SOLR

DataLogics Adobe PDF Java Toolkit

Forms Processing Add attachment FIFs to stitched PDF package

Extract attachments form PDF submissions Extract form data from PDF submissions

Entrust Certificates Encryption User interface encryption

Java 7 Platform Platform for Grants.gov custom software and COTS products

Liferay 6.1 EE Portal Public user interface Content pages including files

Oracle 11gR2 Enterprise Database Database used for Grants.gov and Liferay

Oracle Active Data Guard 11g

Database Allows the DR database to be used for Reporting

Oracle Directory Services Plus 11g

Directory Services

(LDAP)

User authentication and authorization

Oracle RAC 11g Database Provides database redundancy for Production and Test environments

Oracle WebLogic 11g Application Server Application server used by Adobe and Grants.gov custom software

SOLR 4.0 Search Engine Indexing of Opportunity Synopsis and Site Content data

Used for Faceted Grant Opportunity search and Site Content search

Symantec Protection 7.5 Anti-Virus Scans the submissions to determine if the attachments have a virus

Tableau 8.2.3 Reporting Provides operational reports using

Grants.gov data

The following table includes hardware technology used by Grants.gov:

Alcatel OMNI 6850 Switches

Switches Edge switches used for Internet in Primary and Alternate sites

Cisco Firewall ASA 5545-X Firewall Firewalls used in Primary and Alternate sites

Cisco 4900M Switches Switches Core switches used in Primary and Alternate sites

Dell PowerEdge R720XD Servers Servers used for monitoring tools and Tableau

F5 Big IP LTM 2000 Load Balancer Routes traffic to servers based on load

Oracle SL150 Tape Library Tape Library Tape Library used for backups in Production environment in Primary site

Oracle SPARC T5-2 Solaris

Servers Servers used in the Production/Training environments in Primary site. Several T5 servers are also used to supplement Test/DR environment in Alternate site.

Oracle SPARC T4 Solaris

Servers Main Servers used in Test/DR environments in Alternate site.

Oracle ZS3 Storage SAN devices used in Production/Training in Primary site and Test/DR environments in Alternate site.

EMC 5300 Storage SAN device used in Alternate site to store logs

The following table includes Tools used by Grants.gov operations:

Cisco IPS Subscription Intrusion Detection Detects attacks on the system

EMC RSA SecurID VPN Provides Grants.gov teams with VPN authentication to data centers

ManageEngine Monitoring Monitors the Grants.gov application layer

Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Database Diagnostics Pack 12c

Monitoring Database diagnostics

Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Database Tuning Pack 12c

Monitoring Database tuning

PagerDuty Monitoring Sends alerts to multiple designated recipients

Pingdom Monitoring Accesses Grants.gov features from outside the network to monitor if the site is up and functioning properly

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Monitoring Network Monitoring

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager

Monitoring Monitors network configuration changes

SolarWinds Firewall Security Manager

Monitoring Firewall configuration monitoring

Splunk Log Aggregator Aggregates logs to support issue research and problem diagnosis

Symantec Netbackup Backup Performs system backup

Tenable Nessus Security Scanning Scans the network looking for security vulnerabilities

Titania Nipper Studio Security Scanning Scans network devices looking for security vulnerabilities

Trustwave AppDetectivePRO

Security Scanning Scans the database looking for security vulnerabilities

The key aspects of the Network topology in the Grants.gov system are:

Oracle Database Real Application Cluster (RAC):

Solaris 11 Logical Domains (LDoms):

Redundant physical servers Redundant firewalls and switches Redundant F5 load balancers Oracle ZS3 SAN with redundant controllers

The diagrams below show the overall network architecture for both the primary and alternate Grants.gov sites: