EFOJ Redacted.pdf

HPE Alletra SAN Storage Arrays CONTROL NUMBER VA-26-00060662

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:

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 Storage Area Network (SAN) storage arrays, Host Bus Adapters, Management Server hardware and software with installation, configuration, and system performance and verification services (included warranty with purchase).

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office (EHRM-IO) has a requirement for brand name HPE Alletra SAN storage arrays, Host Bus Adapters, Management Server hardware and software with installation, configuration, and system performance and verification services. This brand name equipment and included software includes all firmware; installation and configuration, startup, system performance verification services; and the standard commercial offering of five years of warranty support.

The Government requires this equipment to expand and strengthen the EHRM-IO Data Migration and Syndication storage environment at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) to support escalating Data Migration and Syndication storage capacity and performance needs. VA requires a solution that is interoperable and compatible with the existing infrastructure. Additionally, the VA requires the solution to be able to independently increase storage volume and throughput capacity, move data objects (computer disks, files, databases) across the new and existing storage systems without downtime to supported systems, and manage the storage environment from a central management system that allows visibility to storage allocation, performance, errors and alerts in a single pane of glass.

The hardware shall be delivered within 30 days after receipt and processing of the delivery order. Warranty support shall include 24/7 technical support both online and over the phone, with defective media retention (DMR). Period of performance for the warranty support shall be 5 years from date of award.

The total estimated value of the proposed action is .

4. Statutory Authority:

Pursuant to Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul (RFO) 16.507(a), 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 implemented by RFO 16.507-6(b)(2), 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 available among authorized resellers for the required brand name HPE Alletra SAN storage arrays, Host Bus Adapters, Management Server hardware and software with installation, configuration, and system performance and verification services.

EHRM-IO is responsible for managing the transition of the veterans’ patient data from the Veterans Information System and Technology Architecture (VistA) to the new Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR) provided by Oracle Health. 14 Veteran Affairs Medical Centers (VAMC) are currently live with the Federal EHR. Additional five sites are planned to transition in calendar year 2026 with all VAMCs currently scheduled to be completed by 2031.

EHRM-IO Interagency and Data Services (IDS) is responsible for migration of data from VistA to Oracle Health to support both live sites and new transitions. To perform this migration, IDS operates the VistA Exchange 130 (VX130) which collects patient data from 130 VistA systems and transforms and transmits the data in near real time to Oracle Heath for inclusion in the Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR). The availability of this migrated data is critical for the use of the EHR in patient care.

The IDS data migration environment currently has 3 HPE Alletra SANs which provide

2.19 Petabytes of data storage to more than 60 computer systems processing the patient data. These systems have dynamic storage volume and throughput (speed) requirements. IDS requires a flexible and efficient data storage environment to manage the dynamic storage demands.

IDS relies on the HPE proprietary “disaggregated’ architecture which allows the storage environment growth by either increasing capacity by adding disks or increasing throughout by adding controllers. This meets the VA requirement to be able to independently increase storage volume, and throughput capacity ensures data center space and power are used efficiently.

IDS also relies on the HPE proprietary Peer-Motion technology that allows IDS to move storage objects between storage systems without downtime. This meets the VA requirement to move data objects (computer disks, files, databases) across the new and existing storage systems without downtime to supported systems.

IDS must also be able to manage the entire storage environment from a single management system. Only a homogeneous storage environment allows for this as HPE solution uses proprietary management protocols.

Due to technical compatibility requirements, proprietary constraints, and required support for the Peer Motion Utility, expanding the storage environment to support escalating data migration and syndication storage capacity and performance needs require 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.

Additionally, 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 estimated cost to replace the existing storage infrastructure would be approximately $26M based on previous acquisition history. In addition, installing the new equipment and re-configuring the environment would require almost 2 years, based on previous similar efforts. Finally, the time to procure and migrate to a new environment would substantially disrupt the EHRM go-live schedule that this environment supports.

If IDS could not procure HPE SAN storage hardware, the EHRM-IO program would be unable to expand storage capacity and throughput independently, forcing disruptive full system replacements to meet dynamic workload demands. Without HPE's proprietary Peer-Motion technology, IDS would have no technically equivalent means to migrate storage objects between systems without lengthy downtime, requiring scheduled outages that would interrupt the near real-time flow of patient data from VistA to Oracle Health. Any interruption to this data pipeline directly impairs the availability of the patient data. Furthermore, the inability to manage a unified storage environment through HPE's single-pane-of-glass management platform would increase operational complexity, reduce visibility into performance and fault conditions, and extend mean time to resolution for storage incidents affecting the 60-plus systems dependent on the IDS environment. The cumulative effect would be a degradation of IDS's ability to support both the 14 currently live VAMCs and the 26 sites planned for transition in calendar year 2027, potentially placing the EHRM-IO program's mission and timeline at significant risk.

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 could meet the Government’s requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name HPE SAN devices and warranty support. In accordance with RFO 16.507(c)(1)(i), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders.

Furthermore, in accordance with RFO 5.301, 16.507-6(f), and 16.507-7(c)(1)(i), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract 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: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in March 2026 by reviewing industry publications and researching the websites of the following vendors to ascertain the ability of any source to meet the requirements:

DataDirect Networks (www.ddn.com), NetApp (www.netapp.com), Pure Storage (www.purestorage.com).

DataDirect Networks is not able to independently increase storage volume and throughput capacity, move data objects (computer disks, files, databases) across the new and existing storage systems without downtime to supported systems, and manage the storage environment from a central management system that allows configuration and visibility of storage allocation, performance, errors and alerts in a single pane of glass.

NetApp is not able to independently increase storage volume and throughput capacity, move data objects (computer disks, files, databases) across the new and existing storage systems without downtime to supported systems, and manage the storage environment from a central management system that allows configuration and visibility of storage allocation, performance, errors and alerts in a single pane of glass.

Pure Storage is not able to independently increase storage volume and throughput capacity, move data objects (computer disks, files, databases) across the new and existing storage systems without downtime to supported systems, and manage the storage environment from a central management system that allows configuration and visibility of storage allocation, performance, errors and alerts in a single pane of glass.

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. Additionally, no vendor can provide storage arrays that support the data transfer solution requirement (moving data objects across the new and existing storage systems without downtime to the supported systems 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) #372254 to NASA SEWP on March 25, 2026. The RFI closed on April 7, 2026. Four responses were received from SDVOSBs; ThunderCat Technology, LLC (ThunderCat) and METGreen Solutions, Inc (METGreen), Swish Data Corp (Swish) and Greenbriar Government Solutions (Greenbriar). Thundercat and METGreen proposed HPE solutions and were determined by VA technical experts to be capable of fulfilling the requirement. Swish and Greenbriar proposed Pure Storage solutions and were determined by VA technical experts to not be capable of fulfilling the requirement.

Additional market research was performed by the Contract Specialist in May 2026 by utilizing the NASA SEWP V Provider Lookup Tool/Market Research Tool. The search using keywords “Hewlett Packard” and “Alletra” identified 152 contract holders that are authorized resellers of HPE products and services. Of the 152 resellers, 29 are Service-

Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSB) within Groups B, C, and D of

NASA SEWP.

The requirement has been found to be within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC. As a result of this market research, there is reasonable expectation competition exists on the NASA SEWP V GWAC amongst two or more SDVOSB concerns for the required HPE hardware and warranty support.

9. Other Facts: None.

Advocate for Competition Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of brand name HPE Alletra SAN storage arrays, Host Bus Adapters, Management Server hardware and software with installation, configuration, and system performance and verification services (included warranty with purchase) on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Jason Bullen Date Advocate for Competition Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement Operations Department of Veterans Affairs