Questions from Industry.pdf

Questions from Industry

1. Is there any existing AWS setup or systems already in place that this project will need to integrate with? –

This will be integrating with AWS MLSpace environment used for Educational Institutions

2. Will students need help building out the courses on AWS, or will they only require access to Amazon Sagemaker and other specified services?

Instructors will be building out necessary course resources via MLSpace, students will access via that service.

3. Should the AWS environment be turned on and o daily, or should it remain “on” continuously?

The MLSpace environment will be online continuously,

4. Who will be responsible for accessing and managing the AWS environment?

The faculty will be responsible for configuring the environment via MLSpace.

5. How many students need access per class, per semester?

3 Classes in the Fall, 4 in the Spring. Approximately 35 students per class.

6. How many are expected to use the AWS resources simultaneously, and what are the peak usage times?

Peak usage will be running up to assignment / project due dates. It would be expected that most students will be using the environment at the same time during this.

7. Will there be any storage needs for archiving data or for future access?

Yes, the Big-Data course will require the ability to archive and ingest data for analysis.

8. How many hours per week do you expect the AWS resources to be in use for each course?

Resources should be available for the entire time.

9. Who will administer user access the cloud environment?

MLSpace allows the instructors to add students.

10. Who is responsible for managing the cloud infrastructure?

Faculty will manage basic access, Bidder will need to ensure that there are no overages.

11. What are your requirements for the cloud infrastructure?

Requirements are detailed in the statement of work section of the solicitation.

12. Do you have any cybersecurity requirements?

No.

13. What is the maximum number of users per class?

14. Can you list the services that will be used per class and the estimated total hours per semester per service? For example, list EC2 instance types that will be used and total time of use?

- Class 1: Approx 35 users, estimated 35 GPUs (large accelerated computing units) with about 6000 hours.

- Class 2: Approx 9 users, estimated 9 GPUs (large accelerated computing units) with about 1500 hours.

- Class 3: Approx 44 users, estimated 44 GPUs, S3 storage, EC2 Map-Reduce, dedicated notes for NiFI ingestion, with about 3000 hours

- Class 4: Approx 30 users, estimated 44 GPUs, S3 storage, EC2 Map-Reduce, with about 3000 hours

- Class 5, 6, 7: Approx 44 users, estimated 44 GPUs, S3 Storage, with about 5-10000 hours of use each..

15. Many services o er pricing tiers or reserved instances that provide discounts for committing to use a certain amount of resources over a longer term (e.g., 1 year or 3 years) or for committing to a higher level of usage. Does the customer wish to take advantage of these opportunities?

We are currently unable to go beyond one year.

16. AWS billing works as follows:

1) Pay-as-You-Go: Customers are charged based on their actual usage of AWS services. You pay only for the resources you consume, such as compute power, storage, or data transfer, with no upfront fees or long-term contracts.

2) Billing Dimensions: Each AWS service has its own pricing model, which may be based on factors like:

a) Compute Resources: For services like EC2, you’re billed based on instance type, hours of usage, and other factors such as data transfer and additional features (e.g., Elastic IP addresses).

b) Storage: For services like S3, you pay for the amount of data stored and the duration of storage, as well as any data transfer and retrieval operations.

c) Data Transfer: Charges apply for data transferred out of AWS to the internet or between AWS regions.

The solicitation requires a fixed price. Please provide an explanation on how vendors should determine a fixed price given that the usage of services may fluctuate and is largely uncertain.

Estimates of use could be considered the following, focused on MLSpace access, with the addition of the guarantee that no overage beyond the contracted amount would be possible.

- Class 1: Approx 35 users, estimated 35 GPUs (large accelerated computing units) with about 6000 hours.

- Class 2: Approx 9 users, estimated 9 GPUs (large accelerated computing units) with about 1500 hours.

- Class 3: Approx 44 users, estimated 44 GPUs, S3 storage, EC2 Map-Reduce, dedicated notes for NiFI ingestion, with about 3000 hours

- Class 4: Approx 30 users, estimated 44 GPUs, S3 storage, EC2 Map-Reduce, with about 3000 hours

- Class 5, 6, 7: Approx 44 users, estimated 44 GPUs, S3 Storage, with about 5-10000 hours of use each..

17. Please explain the following statement:

The proposed contract action is for products which the government intends to solicit and negotiate a Firm-Fixed-Price contract on a sole source basis under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b) to the Sterling Computers Corporation.. Only one source has been identified to satisfy the requirement.

The proposed contract action is for products which the government previously awarded to a Firm- Fixed-Price contract on a sole source basis under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b) to the Sterling Computers Corporation.. Only one source has been previously identified to satisfy the requirement.