JA_VHASTLHCS HCI Upgrade final_v2_Redacted.pdf

CONTROL NUMBER VA-25-00096088

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: The proposed action is for a Firm-Fixed-Price Delivery Order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) to procure brand name Cisco Systems, Inc.(Cisco) servers and NetApp, Inc (NetApp) storage equipment, along with all required auxiliary components. This procurement is for commodities only.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information & Technology, Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Saint Louis Health Care System (STLHCS), Healthcare Technology Management has a requirement for the procurement of brand name Cisco/NetApp server hardware to run virtual machines (VMs) on brand name FlexPod infrastructure and replace existing Hyperconverged-infrastructure (HCI). These VMs support the functionality, operation, and interoperability of a variety of medical equipment, including, but not limited to, infusion pumps, defibrillators, Vocera badges, cardiology and critical care software, and gastrointestinal procedure documentation software. The full list of brand name Cisco servers and NetApp storage equipment, along with all required auxiliary components, is detailed in the Product Description.

Delivery in full of all the items listed in the charts below shall be no more than 90 days after date of award. The total estimated value of the proposed action is

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), 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 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 justification, it was determined that limited competition among authorized resellers is available for this brand name requirement. FlexPod is a predesigned, integrated, and validated architecture that combines Cisco Unified Computing System servers, the Cisco Nexus family of switches, Cisco Multilayer Director Switch fabric switches, and NetApp storage arrays into a single, flexible architecture. FlexPod is a converged infrastructure solution jointly engineered by Cisco and NetApp, designed to offer a pre-integrated, scalable, and efficient platform for various workloads, including AI, cloud, and traditional enterprise applications. It combines Cisco's computing and networking expertise with NetApp's storage solutions, offering a validated, reliable, and secure infrastructure. FlexPod server infrastructure provides the necessary technical specifications required to run our existing medical

VHASTLHCS HCI Upgrade CONTROL NUMBER VA-25-00096088 applications while allowing for future projected growth. Only brand name Cisco servers and NetApp storage equipment, along with all required auxiliary components, can be integrated into the existing environment to ensure compatibility and interoperability with the existing systems. Other solutions are not compatible with the full range of systems required. The industry standard for FlexPod is Cisco brand servers with NetApps storage. Additionally, it is important to maintain the current Service Level Agreement with VA OIT, as it provides additional backups and reduces future support costs for the system. FlexPod is an allowable solution within the SLA, thus providing the best value for the government.

Our existing equipment (Cisco Hyperflex) is End of Life, necessitating a switch to one of the four (4) possible solutions listed in section 8. Should our existing equipment fail, we would not be able to order replacement parts. Cisco will also no longer support software maintenance or bug fixes after Sept 11th of this year. This poses a serious risk to Veterans going forward as failure of the existing hardware would severely impact the ability to provide healthcare and would result in months of downtime if a solution is not purchased pre-emptively. Of the four (4) potential solutions to purchase, only Cisco/NetApp FlexPod is acceptable. The time frame to fully implement a different solution would be well past the sunset date for support stated above and the duplicated costs would not be recovered through competition

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 this brand name requirement. 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: VA Veterans Integrated Service Network 15 subject matter experts (SMEs) initiated market research by contacting knowledgeable individuals in government and industry and compiling potential hardware solutions for review. The options included Infrastructure as a Managed Service (IAAMS) Storage, Cisco virtual storage area network (VSAN), Nutanix Hyperflex and Cisco/NetApp FlexPod. VAs SMEs determined that:

• IAAMS Storage - This solution is not acceptable since the hardware would not be owned by VA St. Louis, meaning ongoing payments to continue operation vs. an upfront cost. Also, and perhaps more importantly, not owning the equipment

VHASTLHCS HCI Upgrade CONTROL NUMBER VA-25-00096088

ADDENDUM

- additional information for Section 8 Market Research:

Several Government SMEs were asked to provide technical input into the possibility if any original equipment manufacturer vendor converged infrastructure would be technically equivalent or superior to the brand name Cisco servers and NetApp storage equipment, along with all required auxiliary components solution stated above.

The SMEs determined that hardware from Dell, for instance, would be most akin to the Cisco VSAN solution listed above, and would be similarly priced. Upon reviewing, there are some technical limitations the SMEs can expand upon for these. While not outright incompatible in the same way Nutanix or IAAMS would be for VAs needs, the other non-FlexPod solutions do take up a larger physical footprint than FlexPod, and we have limited rack space. This, combined with the fact that control VMs are required for those (reducing the relative resources available for our medical VMs) means that they would be less suited towards our requirement for future scalability.