P03 - JA Redacted.pdf

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 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of brand name Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Primera Storage arrays populated with Solid State Drives (SSD) inclusive of installation and configuration services and warranty.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The VA, Office of Information and Technology has a requirement for HPE Primera Storage arrays for the VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) program. The proposed action will replace three

(3) end of support storage arrays with two (2) storage arrays which will add storage and upgrade existing storage equipment for the existing VINCI environment. The VINCI environment is located at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) and is HPE and Windows centric. As the VINCI environment has continued to grow, use by researchers has increased dramatically, requiring additional storage to meet demand.

The Government requires this equipment to augment the computing resources of existing HPE hardware to support the increasing demands of our researchers.

The current Storage Area Network (SAN) to be replaced, are all HPE 3par models (2X V400 and 1X 7450). The VA requires two (2) HPE Primera 670 SAN storage arrays, populated with sixty-four (64) 7.68 terabyte (TB) SSD each. This equipment is to include all firmware and remote installation and configuration, startup, and system performance verification services. The delivery of hardware shall be within thirty (30) days after receipt and processing of the delivery order. Maintenance shall include 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support with defective media retention (DMR). 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 document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the

Control Number VA-21-00073582 required brand name HPE SAN storage arrays and SSDs. The Government requires this equipment to expand and upgrade the Data Syndication storage environment at the AITC to support escalating Data Syndication storage capacity and performance needs.

Currently, the Data Syndication storage environment features twelve HPE 3PAR SAN storage arrays which serve data from all 130 VA medical centers and constantly runs data quality checks and SAN block checks to check each data field against the source.

These activities require an upgraded storage infrastructure to accommodate storage of this data as it is analyzed and prepared for cutover. The current HPE 3PAR storage units are very robust, some delivering 1,000,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS); however, the load put on them has pushed them over their performance thresholds. In addition, three of these twelve arrays are aged out of maintenance and therefore, as of June 2021, HPE no longer provides support. Without HPE’s support, simply adding storage capacity to the existing arrays would not be beneficial to the VA.

As a result, this procurement will add a new next generation SAN storage array (HPE Primera) that guarantees 100 percent availability and ability to interoperate with the existing arrays to create a storage environment with more IOPS, capable of handling the ever-increasing load.

The SSDs being procured with this action are fully compatible with both the HPE Primera SAN storage arrays and the existing HPE 3PAR 20800 SAN storage arrays.

The new SAN storage array will be deployed within an existing storage and server environment that is comprised of only HPE hardware and software. Therefore, only HPE brand equipment is fully compatible within the existing HPE-based storage infrastructure, which connects to an HPE-base server environment comprised of dozens of existing servers. The existing HPE SAN storage arrays are proprietary to HPE and, due to the included proprietary HPE code, no other brand of storage arrays is compatible with the current storage infrastructure. Only HPE SAN storage arrays will be able to communicate with the current infrastructure due HPE proprietary protocols. Only HPE SAN storage arrays can interoperate within VA’s existing HPE storage environment at the AITC. Should any other brand name be used, a complete replacement of the existing HPE storage environment would be necessary. VA subject matter experts estimate it would cost a minimum of approximately to replace the current infrastructure to meet the current required functionality. This estimate is based on VA subject matter experts’ analysis as part of market research of similar solutions.

Specifically, no other brand name SAN storage arrays will communicate and function within the current infrastructure due to the proprietary constraints. Due to technical compatibility requirements and the proprietary constraints of HPE SAN storage arrays, expanding and strengthening the storage resources to support Data Syndication activities requires hardware that is 100 percent compatible with the hardware already in use in the storage environment at the AITC. Any additional SAN storage arrays and associated components are required to fit and have 100 percent compatibility in an already existing HPE environment; therefore, HPE and its authorized resellers are the only contractors that can provide SAN storage arrays that are fully compatible within the HPE-based infrastructure at the AITC.

Furthermore, the VINCI environment uses HPE’s Peer Motion software (aka Federation zoning) to seamlessly transfer data between existing HPE SAN storage arrays. This concurrent and non-disruptive data transfer is a VA functional requirement and makes it possible to load-balance the data among the 3PAR HPE storage arrays in the Data Syndication environment at the AITC. No vendors other than HPE or its authorized resellers provide this VA functional requirement and no other hardware can interoperate with this software due to HPE proprietary code. Implementing a non-HPE SAN storage array would negatively impact the existing infrastructure because it would not support load balancing via Peer Motion. No product other than HPE storage can be managed by the existing software and provide 100 percent compatibility with the existing equipment.

Finally, the HPE Primera SAN storage array and SSDs are proprietary HPE products;

therefore, only HPE or its authorized resellers has the access to the proprietary data and source code necessary to provide warranty services for the hardware and software within this hardware. The proprietary code is required to ensure the SAN storage array and SSDs are properly operational and defects properly resolved. Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) grants access to HPE proprietary data and source code and is required to provide the warranty services on the SAN storage array and SSDs and ensure all the services provided are properly configured. Failure to procure the brand name HPE SAN Storage Array would hamper VA’s ability to maintain its current operational status. Specifically, without the procurement of the brand name HPE storage array, SSDs, installation and configuration services and warranty, the existing HPE storage arrays will increasingly be pushed beyond their performance threshold when fail-overs occur. Critical applications will continue to run in a degraded state which will compromise VA’s ability to provide a secured environment for VA research which will impact the ability of VA to provide care to Veterans.

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 HPE SAN Storage Arrays. 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.

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: Market research was conducted in March and April 2021 by the Government’s technical experts via web-based research and through contact with vendors for information on storage. Vendors were provided with the precise data center specifics and were asked to provide support for existing hardware/software within the VINCI environment. For the Storage SAN’s these included Oracle, Hitachi, Dell EMC, International Business Machines (IBM), DataDirect Networks (DDN), and HPE. The results of the market research confirmed that only HPE or its authorized resellers have the capability of providing storage arrays that are compatible with the existing VINCI infrastructure. Oracle, Hitachi, Dell EMC, IBM, and DDN products were reviewed and did not meet the requirement to integrate seamlessly with CDW. This equipment is required to fit and have 100 percent compatibility in an already existing HPE environment, and load balancing software. Due to proprietary protocols, only HPE products would be compatible with the infrastructure and capable of delivering the current required functionality. It was found that only HPE and its authorized resellers can provide warranty on the HPE servers as no other manufacturer has the required access to HPE proprietary data and source code. Based on these market research efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only HPE brand name storage arrays can meet all of the VA’s needs.

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical and 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.

Date: ___

Signature: ________________________

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. Contracts awarded on NASA SEWP V GWAC have already been determined to be fair and reasonable. Price competition is anticipated as there are multiple potential vendors on NASA SEWP V GWAC. Finally, the successful quote will be compared to the Independent Government Cost Estimate.

Date: __________________________

Signature: ______________________

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date: __________________________ Signature: ______________________

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the procurement of HPE Primera Storage Arrays populated with Solid State Drives (SSD) inclusive of installation and configuration services and warranty, on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: Signature: _________________