JA Storage Grid_Redacted.pdf

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement Acquisition and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for issuance of a firm-fixed-priced delivery order under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal brand name NetApp maintenance support services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Financial Services Center (FSC) requires Brand Name NetApp vendor maintenance support for an existing Storage Area Network System (SAN) otherwise known as NetApp StorageGRID located in Philadelphia Information Technology Center (PITC).

This system currently supports object storage (tier 3) hosting FSC system backups and containers for long term records retention.

With this renewal with a new vendor, hardware that fails will be repaired or replaced new as an included deliverable. The Contractor shall provide remote support 24x7x365, however in occurrences where support cannot be accomplished remoted, the Contractor shall deliver onsite support within 4 hours after incident. The Contractor shall provide contact information for the on-site NetApp technician to coordinate site visitation and access.

Hardware and software maintenance shall be a base period of 12-months, with two subsequent 12-month options. The total effort shall not exceed 36 months. The Period of Performance is September 1, 2024, to August 31, 2025, with two (2) twelve-month option Periods, if exercised.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on Market Research, as described in section eight of this justification, it was determined that competition is available for the required brand name NetApp vendor maintenance support for an existing SAN otherwise known as NetApp StorageGRID software among authorized resellers.

The requirement to renew NetApp maintenance support for use in PITC to sustain the existing NetApp software/hardware utilized by VA. This infrastructure has been in place at VA since fiscal year 2019. VA currently utilizes NetApp StorageGRID appliances to store backup and/or archive data. This renewal is required to provide maintenance

StorageGRID Maintenance Service Renewal Control Number VA-24-00073641 support for the StorageGRID appliance that can sync files between the PITC and existing on-premises NetApp hardware/software appliances using shared interfaces and management tools.

To prevent interoperability issues, such as products, because of the proprietary configuration and function of NetApp, products like NetApp only function within their own production environment and do not interoperate in a mixed vendor variety of licensing model or configuration. As part of the maintenance offering, VA requires software upgrades, updates, and patches for its existing NetApp software.

Only NetApp software maintenance, provided by the OEM or through an authorized reseller, can provide the necessary software upgrades, updates, and patches because of the limitations imposed with respect to access to the propriety source code. This access is required to develop and implement software updates that seamlessly interoperate and are based on said source code. Since the software is proprietary, a legal restriction is placed on access to the software source code that is required to develop upgrades, updates, and patches to the software. For this reason, no other source other than a NetApp authorized reseller can provide the required hardware, software, and maintenance for the NetApp products.

Utilization of any other brand maintenance would require a total replacement of the infrastructure. VA estimates that it would take approximately 9-12 months for a new solution and environment to be minimally established. Specifically, new hardware and software would need to be tested, deployed, security and validation testing, and re/configurations if a new product and or vendor was used. This does not consider the time to migrate data to the new system. While this would be occurring, would need to run concurrently the current, existing NetApp infrastructure technology and prepare for potential migrations. VA estimates that these duplicative costs, which exceed $1.2 million, would not be recouped via any competition. As such, the existing infrastructure must be maintained as proposed.

Failure to renew this maintenance as proposed would prevent the VA being able to prepare for disaster recovery instances. Specifically, without access to this maintenance, VA would be unable to write data backups to meet offsite & long- term data retention policies in accordance with National Archives and Records Administration and agency regulations. Data backups are critical and are used to reconstitute data should a local failure occur. As such, the maintenance must be procured as proposed.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name NetApp hardware, software, and maintenance. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be

StorageGRID Maintenance Service Renewal Control Number VA-24-00073641 synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by VA technical personnel in March 2024 by researching websites for products comparable to the NetApp disk array, software, and maintenance services. Specifically, Government's technical experts conducted research of similar solutions, including EMC Corporation, Pure Storage, and Hewlett Packard. While these vendors provide similar maintenance services, they cannot provide the required maintenance support services, due to the limitations of access to the proprietary data, source codes, and protocols of the NetApp storage solution to provide the required hardware and software, as well as maintenance, that is compatible with the existing environment, as noted in Section 5 above.

Additionally, in April 2024, market research was conducted by utilizing the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Look-up Tool to determine whether brand-name NetApp products are available from NetApp resellers that hold NASA SEWP V contracts. It was confirmed that there are 68 contract holders for NetApp approved resellers, 16 of the approved resellers are Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). Of those sixteen SDVOSBs, 14 were verified to be in the Small Business Administration (SBA) certification database on the SBA Veterans Small Business Certification Program (VetCert) portal at https://veterans.certify.sba.gov/ in accordance to Veteran Affairs Acquisition Regulation (VAAR) 852.219-73(b). Finally, in April 2024, a Request for Information (RFI) was issued on the NASA SEWP V GWAC which received two responses were received, and both were VetCert certified SDVOSB vendors. Based on this information, there is a reasonable expectation that limited competition exists on the NASA SEWP V GWAC for the required brand name NetApp licenses and service.

9. Other Facts: None