JA.pdf

and the MVP. MVP is VA’s premier research project with national visibility at the VA Secretary level, encompassing collection and analysis of genetic samples for one million volunteer Veterans. GenISIS hosts over ten petabytes of data and greater than 9,000 high performance compute cores. This infrastructure supports a user base exceeding 300 researchers who are performing high end genomic analysis on the collected MVP data set. Red Hat is the operating system used in GenISIS as the foundation of the HPC research cluster and storage infrastructure. The procurement of Red Hat licenses and associated maintenance support for scientific HPC environments is critical for the upgrade of the existing GenISIS infrastructure and expansion of research analysis activities in the MVP program. The maintenance will ensure the success of current and future research through continued support of specialized computational and analytical requirements as the program progresses. A lack of Red Hat software, maintenance, and support will result in the GenISIS cluster and associated storage being unsupportable for research on MVP data and result in serious damage to VA research and analyses currently in progress. Without subscription licensing, maintenance support, the GenISIS Project will become inoperable. Further, Red Hat is the only software that is fully compatible and interoperable with the existing GenISIS infrastructure, and therefore, introducing any other brand software will require a complete reengineering of the existing infrastructure resulting in substantial duplicated costs, which would be required to stand up a new infrastructure with one of the other operating systems. That would require one full time engineer to implement the new infrastructure, and then run both in parallel until full acceptance of the new environment.

Both environments would need to be maintained until the full adoption causing costs that could not be recovered through competition. Additionally, no other source can provide the required maintenance support services due to the proprietary nature of the source code. Specifically, if any other source was to provide these maintenance services without access to the Red Hat proprietary source code, it would not be able to push upgrades or provide access to Red Hat community forums, Red Hat Knowledge Base, technical and product news, and new product downloads to the existing software or fix and configure the software to keep it fully operational. Therefore, only Red Hat or a reseller of Red Hat products have the ability to provide the required maintenance support services.

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 RedHat software license subscriptions 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 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 by reviewing other similar software. This market research is an ongoing process starting in 2021 and continuously being conducted, as recently as October 2024.

Specifically, the Government reviewed similar software, Ubuntu Server and SUSE Linux. Based on the reviews, the Government’s technical experts determined that only Red Hat software is fully interoperable and compatible with the existing infrastructure as discussed in paragraph five. Additionally, no other maintenance provider can provide the required maintenance support of the RedHat software due to the proprietary nature of the source code.

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 anticipated competition and discounts among NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Additionally, NASA SEWP determines that all catalog prices on its GWAC’s are fair and reasonable. Additional price analysis may be performed in accordance with FAR 15.404-1(b). .

12.Contracting Officer Certification/Approval I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. As this contract action does not exceed $750,000, the certification required by FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(A) serves as the Contracting Officer’s approval.