FY26 Puppet JA_redacted.pdf

CONTROL NUMBER VA-26-00033096

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: The proposed action is for a Firm-Fixed-Price task order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal of brand name Puppet Enterprise software licenses and maintenance.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The VA, Infrastructure Operations, Linux/Unix Division has a requirement to renew its existing Puppet software licenses and maintenance through Perforce Software, Inc., who acquired Puppet in 2022. The Linux/Unix Division currently utilizes Puppet Enterprise to automate server builds and manage configuration and server state management. This effort is to renew the existing 1,000 Puppet Enterprise software licenses and Premium Support. The Puppet Enterprise software license enables the Linux/Unix Division to continue usage on the servers in its infrastructure. The premium support plan will provide 24x7x365 phone and online support, unlimited technical contacts, unlimited support cases per month.

The period of performance shall consist of a 12-month base period with three 12-month option periods. The total estimated value of the proposed action is , inclusive of all option periods.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR Overhaul) 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 FAR Overhaul 16.507(a) entitled “an item peculiar to one manufacturer (e.g., a particular brand-name, product, or a feature of a product that is peculiar to one manufacturer”.

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: This effort is to renew existing Puppet Enterprise software licenses and maintenance to continue implementation and enable configuration control to all servers within the existing infrastructure. Puppet Enterprise software has been utilized by the Linux/Unix Division since 2014 to implement support of VA's Configuration Control Project to meet Government requirements for automation, server configuration management, and server state management on Linux and Solaris Operating Systems. Puppet is the only software currently being utilized in VA for configuration control across multiple Operating Systems. The use of any alternative configuration control software would require extensive Operating System dependent coding to account for differences in each targeted Operating System. Specifically, VA staff have invested over ten years of time and effort in the development of approximately 1,000 scripts and modules for controlling system states that are dependent on Puppet's pre-configured code base. This has required a phased approach and the work of two Senior System Administrators averaging 10 to 15 hours weekly to create and maintain Puppet scripts. No other software can be implemented to build on the existing implementation of Puppet Enterprise due to Puppet’s propriety software code currently supporting the Linux/Unix Division. The use of any other brand software would require an extensive installation and configuration effort to be able to function on the VA’s network. Additionally, the alternative software would need to be deployed to approximately 251 VA Applications that currently interface with Puppet. Further, pivoting to any alternative software would require a manual large-scale re-engineering of processes and a rewrite of approximately 1,000 scripts to facilitate the uniqueness of the new brand and recoding of all modules that have been tested in development environments, proven in Pre- Production Environments, and executed in Production environments. Based on the previous acquisition history and the development efforts on the current contract, VA technical experts have estimated that between 3,640 to 5,460 hours of duplicative effort and approximately would be required to implement any alternative software. Based on previous acquisition history, the estimated cost of procuring, implementing and integrating with VA’s existing environment would cost an additional

. These duplicated costs are not expected to be recovered through competition.

If VA was unable to renew the required Puppet software licenses and premium support, then all routines would be disabled, and events would need to be manually executed in order to complete requested demands. For example, the quarterly security string change script, is a script to deliver a configuration change to all servers through the use of a control service in Puppet. With Puppet, the full process takes 30 mins, for all 1,200 Linux nodes, however, done manually, the effort becomes a timely process of proper coordination and manual hands on labor across all servers with all associated projects.

The change type would have to be managed like a patching event per project. This impact would be felt across the entirety of VA and lead to a degradation of all VA medical data supporting Veterans Health Administration and Veterans Benefit Administration and ultimately medical care of Veterans.

Lastly, no other software developer can access Puppet's proprietary source code.

Therefore, only Puppet Software or an authorized reseller is capable of providing the premium support services due to the proprietary nature of the Puppet Enterprise software source code.

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 Puppet Enterprise software licenses and maintenance. In accordance with FAR 16.507-7(c)(1)(i), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with Revolutionary FAR Overhaul parts 6.103-1(d) and 6.301, 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 market place that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical experts conducted web-based market research in March 2026 to ascertain the ability of any other software that is capable of meeting VA's requirements. VA technical experts conducted market research by researching other similar brand name products HCL BigFix EndPoint Manager and RedHat Ansible. HCL BigFix EndPoint Manager is not designed for real-time or event driven state management. RedHat Ansible requires manual and, or scheduled execution of playbooks to identify and correct deviations which can result in delays and requires significant resources to complete remediation tasks. As of March 2026, no other software could meet VA’s requirement or work with VA servers except for Puppet Enterprise. Based on that research, it was determined that Puppet Enterprise is the only solution can be implemented within VA's existing open-source implementation without the significant time and cost necessary to reengineer existing processes, rewrite over 1,000 scripts to facilitate the uniqueness of the new brand, and recode all modules that have been tested in development environments, proven in Pre-Production Environments, and executed in Production environments as detailed in Section 5 of this justification. Therefore, VA technical experts have determined no other alternative brand can avoid the duplication of effort and cost as described in Section 5 of this justification.

Further, the market research confirmed that only Puppet Software or an authorized reseller is capable of providing the required maintenance due to the proprietary nature of the Puppet software source code.

Additional market research was performed in March 2026 by utilizing the NASA SEWP Provider Lookup tool to determine whether brand name Puppet Enterprise licenses and software is available from NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. It was determined that there are 7 Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses who are authorized resellers of Puppet Software products and services. Therefore, limited competition is anticipated among NASA SEWP contract holders for the required software licenses and maintenance.

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical/Requirements Certification

I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on historical pricing of previous orders, anticipated competition and discounts among NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Additionally, NASA SEWP V determined that the catalog prices on it GWACs are fair and reasonable.

Finally, the Contracting Officer shall further determine fair and reasonable pricing based upon a price analysis of the officer’s quote as compared to the Government’s Independent Government Cost Estimate.

12. Contracting Officer Certification/Approval I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. This contract action exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold, but does not exceed $900,000, therefore, the certification required by FAR Overhaul 16.507(e)(1) serves as the Contracting Officer’s approval.