9022 - Questions and Answers.pdf

FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Procurement Office

605 Suwannee Street, MS 20 Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0450

Phone: (850) 414-4381

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS DATE: December 11, 2024

BID No.: DOT-ITB-25-9022-SJ

BID Title: Data Storage Solution – 5 Year Subscription

OPENING DATE: Monday, December 16, 2024 @ 3:00 PM EST

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS PROVIDED BELOW

Question 1 Will any other data types or workloads also be used with this storage system?

Answer 1 No

Question 2 Does “700TB of writeable storage” mean 700TB of usable capacity before any data reduction possible with JPG files?

Answer 2 Correct

Question 3 Is presentation as a single volume required? Would a single storage pool or unified namespace be acceptable?

Answer 3 Unified would be fine if it can have a single directory scale to 130TB.

Question 4 Is native storage replication required/preferred, or will that be handled by another replication solution?

Answer 4 Native storage replication isn’t required but it may be preferred

Question 5 Is there a preference for block storage (with a file server or gateway for SMB access) or native file storage?

Answer 5 No preference

Question 6 Is data encryption at rest and/or in-flight during replication required/preferred?

Answer 6 In flight is preferred

Question 7 What is the preferred network connectivity for the data network (10/25/100 GbE or other)?

DOT-ITB-25-9022-SJ

Questions and Answers

Answer 7 10/25

Question 8 Does “the ability to revert the storage at least 60 days” refer to snapshots or another type of backup integration?

Answer 8 Snapshots

Question 9 What host OSes, hypervisors/containers, cluster solutions, and applications will be used in conjunction with the storage?

Answer 9 ICC Connect

Question 10 Is a test environment storage device required? If so, what are the capacity requirements or other requirements that differ from the production systems?

Answer 10 NO, not required.

Question 11 If training is required, how many users will be covered and is onsite training required?

Answer 11 Light training for 6 people.

Question 12 Will the deadline be extended due to response time of the question submitted?

Answer 12 No

Question 13 Are you planning on doing any processing of images live on the storage system, now or in the future?

Answer 13

Related to the question, we need the ability reprocess data that is on the storage system. That entails retrieving .fis files from the storage system (~3 GB/mile), processing the .fis files on a separate workstation, and writing (or overwriting) images, .xml files, and well-known binary folders back to the storage system.

Question 14 What is the WAN circuit bandwidth and latency between the two data centers?

Answer 14 1 Gbps

Question 15 Are there any environmental or rack size limitations in your data center? Does FODT want us to include a rack in our BOM?

Answer 15 Standard rack configuration and we have rack space at both locations

Question 16 Minimum performance requirements are listed as 1000 read and 500 write IOP’s.

Can you please tell what your maximum IOPs requirements are?

Answer 16 As long as the minimum is met, requirements will be met.

DOT-ITB-25-9022-SJ

Question 17

Our proposed solution is likely to require16 front-end network connections per site;

hence we will include additional front-end departmental network switches. Can you please tell us what the following specs are for FDOT’s Core network (that to which our switches would connect). What vendor does FDOT use for its core Ethernet network, and what Gbps speed does it run at.

Answer 17 HP Aruba 1Gbps, 10Gbps

Question 18 Does FDOT consider local storage system SNAP technology as an acceptable recovery mechanism for the “Requires the ability to revert the storage at least 60 days” requirement listed in the bid?

Answer 18 Snapshots are fine

Question 19 What front-end network speed fiber port SFP does FDOT want (10Gbps, 25Gbps, 40Gbps, 100Gbps)?

Answer 19 25Gbps, 40Gbps

Question 20 Can a single vendor provide multiple options to the ITB?

Answer 20 No, please provide the best solution and cost

Question 21 Would a turn-key managed service be acceptable, as long as it meets the requirements set forth in the ITB?

Answer 21 No

Question 22 When is the Department of Transportation looking to install the winning solution?

Answer 22 Upon award and contract execution

Question 23 What data storage solutions are currently in place in this environment (if any)?

Answer 23 3-Tier SAN technology with a HYPER-V clustered environment

Question 24 Which cloud providers are currently used for data storage at the Department of Transportation?

Answer 24 AZURE

Question 25 Will DOT be open to looking at Proof of Concepts or online demos prior to their decision making?

Answer 25 No

Question 26 Would an extension to this RFQ be considered?

Answer 26 Please see Addendum No. 1: Revised Timeline attached to the advertisement in the Vendor Information Portal.

Question 27 P.6 – section (Liquidated Damages for Down time). – Do you mind providing some additional clarification on how this will come into play for this current project?

DOT-ITB-25-9022-SJ

Answer 27

As per the scope:

The highlighted response gives a little more clarity.

3. Financial Penalties for Down Time

To ensure operation of writeable storage for both on-site and off-site, below are the requirements to ensure operation and support for 365 days, 24 hours, and 7 days a week. Penalties will require to look at the following:

• Support within 4 Hours – No penalty

• Next Business Day – First penalty incurred (1% of annual expenditure)

• Each additional day of outage the penalty increases appropriately (additional 1% per day up to 10% maximum of annual expenditure) - to clarify, this would be assessed every 6 months, but the fiscal penalties will be based on the per annual basis.

Question 28

For solutions that require more than 4 network interfaces per site, does the department want network switching hardware included in the solution?

If so, does the department have a preferred networking manufacturer and model?

Answer 28 Yes, HP Aruba

Question 29 What is the manufacturer and model of the upstream network switches this solution will connect to?

Answer 29 Core Switch Platform, HP Aruba, 5400R

Question 30 What is the distance between the proposed storage solution’s rack and the upstream network switches?

Answer 30 25 feet

Question 31 If network switching hardware is included in the solution, will it be managed by the department or managed as a part of the solution by the vendor?

Answer 31 The Department

Question 32

They mention replication between two devices.

o Any requirements around RPO and RTOs?

Answer 32 RPO would be 1 hour. RTO would be the penalty schedule in the Scope, under Liquidated Damages.

Question 33

They mention replication between two devices.

o Is replication for disaster recovery from a primary array to a secondary array, or do each of the arrays have data that they replicate to the other array?

DOT-ITB-25-9022-SJ

Answer 33 BOTH

Question 34 Any requirements for NFS or S3 protocol support?

Answer 34 Yes, for NFS, No for S3

Question 35 How many active directory domains need to be supported?

Answer 35 1

Question 36 Are there specific systems or applications where there is an incompatibility concern?

Answer 36 No

Question 37 Any other data types that are to be stored other than the 35 million JPGs collected per year?

Answer 37 Yes, but as long as they match NFS protocols, there should be no conflict.

Question 38 How much variation are there in file sizes? Based on requirements it looks like average idle size written is about 4MB

Answer 38 Correct, file size will not exceed 4MB

Question 39 Are the JPG images being collected have any EXIF or other meta data tags encoded on them as they are being written?

Answer 39 No internal data tagging

DOT-ITB-25-9022-SJ