Justification and Approval NVIDIA Corp Mellanox Swithces_Redacted.pdf

NVIDIA Corp Mellanox Switches Control Number: VA-21-00091080

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, New Jersey 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for the issuance of a firm fixed price (FFP) delivery order under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of brand name NVIDIA Corp Mellanox Switches and associated software, maintenance, warranty, implementation, and installation services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The proposed action is for the purchase of 23 Spectrum based 100GB-400GB brand name NVIDIA Corp Mellanox Ethernet Switches and 40 passive copper ethernet cables in support of VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT), Veterans Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI). OIT has a requirement to expand and upgrade the network capability at three separate locations: Austin Information and Technology Center (AITC), Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Pittsburgh campus, and VHA Boston campus, to handle more bandwidth at lower latency and to support the large scale and high performance required to support advanced analytics for current and future vaccine studies. Switches shall provide high performance coupled with comprehensive support for virtualization and large forwarding tables, as well as building large layer-2 and layer-3 data center fabrics. Switches shall be optimized for storage workloads, with unique switch form factors that integrate into hyperconverged infrastructure and software-defined storage management system for ease of deployment and administration.

This action includes hardware in the quantities listed above, associated software, maintenance, one year increments of warranty support including technical support and replacement of parts, implementation, and installation services.

Maintenance includes bug fixes, software updates, and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week phone and email support. All items will be delivered to Austin Information and Technology Center (AITC), Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Pittsburgh campus and VHA Boston Healthcare System. Delivery of hardware is due 30 days after award with installation and implementation within 12-months of award, including two option periods for continuation of warranty support. The estimated price for the proposed action is inclusive of options.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 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 Subpart 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 eight of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the required brand name NVIDIA Corp Mellanox Switches and associated warranty, maintenance support and installation services. Based on their intricate knowledge of the VINCI environment, the government technical experts have determined that NVIDIA Mellanox switches are the only solution in order to expand our existing deployment of high-speed low latency Mellanox switches. NVIDIA Mellanox provides the highest performance coupled with comprehensive support for virtualization and large forwarding tables, Mellanox is also capable of building large layer-2 and layer-3 data center fabrics. Additionally, Mellanox is optimized for storage workloads, with unique switch form factors that integrate into hyperconverged Infrastructure and software-defined storage management system for ease of deployment and administration. Additionally, the existing VINCI environment has been architected with Mellanox switches and thus purchasing another name brand will present significant issues of interoperability due to proprietary code, NVIDIA Mellanox’s proprietary Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) software coupled with their proprietary ConnectX SmartNICs applications, that provide ethernet connectivity at the required speed and level of efficiency to allow VINCI’s data centers to operate successfully. This is accomplished by utilizing RDMA over Converged ethernet which cannot be achieved in a hybrid multivendor switching environment. If VA were to replace the current Nvidia Mellanox Distribution and Top of Rack deployment across all of VINCI with an equivalent technology it would require at least $3 million in additional work to reengineer its systems, with a timeline of at least a year, during which the current NVIDIA system would still need to run in parallel. This estimated was based on previous similar efforts pursued by VINCI. Additionally, switching applications would require the procurement of new server racks and servers, as the existing edge infrastructure is designed only to physically accept brand name NVIDIA Mellanox switches. Lastly, failure to acquire the required maintenance support of this software and hardware would leave VA without the necessary certified support needed if/when system problems occur. VA would be adversely affected by losing its ability to expand a centralized integrated software-defined storage management system that meets the Government’s requirements mentioned above.

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 switches, as well as hardware, associated software, maintenance, warranty, implementation, and installation service. 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 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), this action will be synopsized at award on the Contract Opportunities and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, 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 during August of 2021 for non-NVIDIA Mellanox switches to ascertain if any other manufacturer’s switch products would satisfy VA’s requirements.

Specifically, VA technical experts performed market research via internet searches and review of product specification sheets, Gartner product technical reviews, and industry publications to ascertain the ability of any source other than Mellanox, or Mellanox’s authorized resellers, to provide equipment to meet the Government’s needs. Researchers assessed products from Arista, Dell, Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper, Netgear, Linksys, Zyxel, and Extreme Networks. This research consisted of assessing these products against the Government’s requirements.

The researchers assessed whether the switches were capable of supporting cut-through capability at line rate on all ports, for any packet size, and at any speed from 1GB to 400GB. Products were also assessed as to whether they could provide high performance coupled with comprehensive support for virtualization and large forwarding tables, building large layer-2 and layer-3 data center fabrics, optimized for storage workloads, with unique switch form factors that integrate into hyperconverged infrastructure and software-defined storage management system for ease of deployment and administration. Lastly, the alternatives were assessed to determine if they would interoperate with VINCI’s existing NVIDIA hardware. Based on the review of other products, the Government’s technical experts determined that no other manufacturer’s hardware or warranty support meets any of the VA’s functional and interoperability requirements as described in section 5 of this document. Only NVIDIA Mellanox switches are compatible with VA’s existing infrastructure to integrate its software-defined storage management system to ensure successful deployment and administration.

Additional market research was conducted in August 2021 via a Request for Information (RFI) on NASA SEWP which revealed that three Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSB) concerns are interested and capable of meeting the Government’s requirements. No quotes were received for non-brand name switches that met the government’s requirements listed above. Additionally, in August 2021, the contract specialist identified 112 contract holders that are resellers of brand name NIVIDIA Corp products by utilizing the NASA SEWP Provider Lookup Tool. Of these 112 resellers, 18 are verified SDVOSBs, 12 are HUBZone Businesses, and 82 are among both Large and Small Businesses. Furthermore, NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests provided that the required items or services are within the scope of the NASA SEWP V contract suite and therefore additional competition may be achieved. Based on this analysis, competition is available among two or more SDVOSB resellers of brand name NVIDIA Mellanox Network Switches and accordingly, this effort will be released as a 100-percent SDVOSB set aside on the NASA SEWP V GWAC.

9. Other Facts: None.