S03_JA HPE SAN Storage v7 FINAL REDACTED.pdf

Control Number VA-24-00080909

JUSTIFICATIONFOR 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: This proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price delivery order issued under a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Alletra Multi Protocol (MP) Storage Area Network (SAN) storage arrays and associated installation, configuration, system performance and verification services, and warranty maintenance services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office (EHRM-IO), Data Migration and Management (DMM) team has a requirement for two brand name HPE Alletra MP Storage Area Network SAN storage arrays. This equipment is to include all firmware and remote installation and configuration, startup, and system performance verification services, and the contractor’s standard commercial offering of five (5) years of warranty maintenance support. The Government requires this contract to expand and strengthen the EHRM-IO DMM storage environment at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) to support the escalating data migration and syndication storage capacity and performance needs of VA’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) modernization effort.

The Delivery of hardware shall be within 30 days after receipt of the delivery order.

Warranty maintenance support shall include 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support, both online and over the phone, with defective media retention. Delivery shall be no later than 30 days from date of award, and will include standard industry maintenance warranty service of five (5) years. The total estimated price of the proposed action is $

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled “Only one awardee is capable of 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 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is

HPE Alletra SAN Storage Arrays Control Number VA-24-00080909 available among authorized resellers for the required brand name HPE Alletra MP SAN storage arrays and associated installation, configuration, system performance and verification services, and warranty maintenance services. Currently the EHRM-IO data migration and syndication storage environment includes two (2) HPE Primera 670 SAN storage arrays and two (2) HPE 3PAR 20850 SAN storage arrays. These arrays serve data for 130 VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) and constantly run data quality checks and SAN block checks to check each data field against the source. In addition, the arrays support storage of an ever-increasing volume of data that is being received from the new EHR (i.e. Oracle Health Millennium) and transformed for integration into the VA data ecosystem for use in reporting and registries. The SAN storage arrays being procured with this action are required to interoperate with the existing arrays to create a storage environment with more input/output per second, capable of handling the ever-increasing load. This hardware will be deployed within an existing server environment that is comprised of only HPE hardware and software. Therefore, only HPE brand equipment can be fully compatible within the existing HPE-based infrastructure.

The existing HPE SAN storage arrays are proprietary to HPE and (due to the included proprietary HPE code) no other brand of SAN storage array is compatible with the current storage infrastructure. Only an HPE SAN storage array can interoperate within EHRM-IO’s existing HPE storage environment at AITC. Specifically, no other brand name SAN storage arrays will communicate and function within the current infrastructure due to the aforementioned proprietary constraints. In addition, no other brand name SAN storage arrays provide support for the HPE Peer Motion Utility that allows seamless transfer of block storage data to and from existing HPE SAN storage arrays in an online fashion without host-based mirroring or an external hardware appliance. The HPE Peer Motion Utility allows DMM storage administrators to transfer data from one HPE storage array to another with minimized downtime. Due to technical compatibility requirements, proprietary constraints, and required support for the Peer Motion Utility, expanding the DMM storage environment to support escalating data migration and syndication storage capacity and performance needs requires the same brand name hardware as what is currently in use. Any additional SAN storage arrays and associated components are required to fit and have 100 percent compatibility in an already existing HPE environment; therefore, HPE and its authorized resellers are the only contractors that can provide SAN storage arrays that are fully compatible within the HPE-based infrastructure at AITC. Additionally, the aforementioned SAN storage arrays are proprietary HPE products; therefore, only HPE or its authorized resellers can provide the required warranty maintenance. Due to the proprietary nature of the hardware, only HPE or its resellers can provide the warranty maintenance for updates, to include all version updates and bug fixes and maintenance support. The proprietary source code is required to access the HPE code structure to ensure the maintenance support provided meets VA’s requirements and ensures the hardware remains operational. Only HPE or its resellers can provide the required warranty maintenance, due to the proprietary nature of the source code needed for access to the proprietary database structures, protocols, software application programming, interfaces, updates, upgrades, and technical support. Access to this code ensures the services are properly configured to the SAN storage arrays. VA does not possess the proprietary technical data and code for HPE to offer to a non-original equipment manufacturer. Without this technical data, no other source can meet VA’s requirements other than HPE, or an authorized reseller. If the Government fails to procure the brand name HPE SAN storage arrays, then the storage infrastructure will not remain sufficiently robust to support EHRM-IO data migration and data syndication activities. Without this enhanced storage performance and capacity, the EHRM-IO DMM team will be unable to complete the data transformations required to migrate data to Oracle Health and to syndicate data back to VA from Oracle Health and other external partners in a timely fashion. In addition, significant risk to the DMM team's ability to back up critical databases on a continuous basis will be introduced. Failure to procure the brand name warranty services associated with this hardware would hamper VA’s ability to maintain the operational status of the SAN storage arrays themselves as well as the existing storage environment into which they will be installed. If the Government does not procure these storage arrays and associated warranty services, Veteran health data will be put at risk as the environment will run out of storage space and we will either lose patient data or have to delete older patient data. Since the current storage environment consists of dozens of existing storage devices, as well as servers and Fiber Channel (FC) devices to connect the storage and servers, the cost to replace the existing storage infrastructure would be approximately $26M based on the cost of the storage devices, servers, and FC devices purchased for the environment over the past six years. In addition, installing the new equipment and re-configuring the environment would require at 3,200 person hours based on previous similar efforts. Finally, the time required to procure these replacements would result in up to six months of downtime for the environment.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract Opportunities Page and the 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: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in March 2024 by reviewing industry publications and researching the websites of the following vendors to ascertain the ability of any source other than HPE or HPE’s resellers to provide equipment that can support EHRM-IO’s escalating data Migration and Syndication storage capacity and performance needs: DataDirect Networks (www.ddn.com), NetApp (www.netapp.com), Pure Storage (www.purestorage.com), and HPE (www.hpe.com). The results of this market research support the fact that no vendor other than HPE or its resellers can provide equipment that satisfies the Government’s interoperability and compatibility requirements previously discussed.

Additionally, no vendor can provide storage arrays that support the Peer Motion Utility data transfer solution which is critical for moving data across storage devices with minimized downtime. VA storage Subject Matter Experts regularly review industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain if any other brand name hardware is available. Based on all these market research efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only HPE brand name SAN storage arrays can meet all of VA’s needs.

Understanding the results of the above research, EHRM-IO posted a Request for Information (RFI) to NASA Solutions for Enterprise Procurement (SEWP); which resulted in seven (7) responses from authorized HPE resellers. All seven responses were from Small Disadvantaged Veteran-Owned (SDVOSB) businesses.

The Contract Specialist conducted additional market research in July 2024 and identified thirty-three (33) contract holders that are resellers of the required brand name HPE SAN Storage devices and support, by utilizing the NASA SEWP V Market Research Tool. Of these 33 resellers, 17 are verified (Small Disadvantaged Veteran- Owned Businesses) SDVOSBs within Groups B, C, and D of NASA SEWP.

Furthermore, the NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests; therefore, as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC, items and services can be added to the catalog on a daily basis. This requirement has been found to be within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC. As a result of the aforementioned market research, there is reasonable expectation competition exists on the NASA SEWP V GWAC amongst two or more SDVOSB concerns for brand name HPE Alletra MP Storage Area Network (SAN) storage arrays and associated installation, configuration, system performance and verification services, and warranty maintenance services. Consequently, this effort will be released to all SDVOSBs in groups B, C and D on the NASA SEWP V GWAC.

9. Other Facts: None