P03 JnA Synergy - Redacted.pdf

BISL FY21 HPE Synergy VA-21-00073905

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center 1701 Directors Blvd Austin, TX 78744

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 four (4) brand name Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) Synergy frames. The first two frames will be fully populated with two (2) each SY660 (2TB) and eight (8) each SY460 (1TB) blade servers. The second set of frames will be fully populated with six (6) each SY660 (2TB) blade servers. Additionally, this action includes associated hardware and software, maintenance, warranty, implementation, and installation services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information Technology (OIT), Veterans Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) has a requirement for brand name HPE Synergy frames to replace aging hardware and strengthen existing VINCI infrastructure at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC). The proposed action is to procure a total of four (4) brand name HPE Synergy frames to provide the computing resources necessary to support the large scale and high performance required for the VA Research community.

The first two frames will be fully populated with two (2) each SY660 (2TB) and eight (8) each SY460 (1TB) blade servers. The second set of frames will be fully populated with six (6) each SY660 (2TB) blade servers. Procuring the fully populated HPE Synergy frames will replace 22 physical boxes that are at the end of system life. These physical boxes currently support 61 virtual machines (VMs) and support Power BI, Pyramid Analytics, Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) Raw Extractors, Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Production and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Support Service Center (VSSC). With each pair of Synergies, VA will be able to create 9 virtual 2-node clusters, significantly increasing the overall power and performance of the VINCI system. The VINCI environment is HP and Windows centric. As the VINCI environment has continued to grow, use by researchers has increased dramatically, requiring additional capabilities to meet demand. The Government requires this equipment to replace outdated and end of life computing resources of existing brand name HP hardware to support the increasing demands of our researchers. The current environment is running Operating System (OS)16, and requires an upgrade, but the VINCI technical team has had to delay the upgrade due to the age and unstable nature of the current platform. Trying to upgrade to OS19 on the current environment carries significant risk, as the platform is not able to support the advanced capabilities and requirements of such an upgrade.

BISL FY21 HPE Synergy Control Number: VA-21-00073905

This action also includes associated hardware, software, maintenance, warranty, and implementation and installation services. Maintenance includes bug fixes, software updates, and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week phone and email support.

Delivery of the frames are required within 30 calendar days of award.

Additionally, the Contractor shall provide a five-year, 24/7 warranty. VA requires a five-year warranty since it anticipates use of these blade servers for a minimum of five years. Installation and implementation shall be completed within 30 calendar days from delivery. The estimated price for the proposed action is

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 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 (8) of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the required brand name HPE Synergy frames including brand name HPE blade servers. The HPE blade servers are required to expand the current VINCI HP server environment located within AITC. This environment is comprised of only HPE hardware and software, therefore, only HPE brand servers can be fully compatitble within the existing HPE based infrastructure at AITC and Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW). The existing infrastructure includes approximately 197 HPE servers and numerous storage devices.

The existing HP servers are proprietary to HPE and, due to the included proprietary HPE code; no other brand of servers is compatible with the current HPE infrastructure. Specifically, no other brand name servers will communicate and function within the current infrastructure due to the aforementioned proprietary constraints. Due to technical compatibility requirements and proprietary constraints of HPE servers, expanding the computing resources to support data migration to Cerner requires the same hardware as what is currently in use at the CDW. Additional servers are required to fit and have 100 percent compatibility in an already existing HPE environment, therefore, HPE and its authorized resellers are the only providers that can provide servers that are fully compatible within the HPE-based infrastructure at AITC.

As the VA Research community continues to grow and require more powerful analytical tools, VINCI will require increased computing resources to process massive amounts of data and the VA needs to enhance its network and infrastructure to meet this demand. If the VA does not procure the frames and compute modules, VINCI will be unable to perform necessary operating system upgrades and keep up with customer requirements because we will lack the necessary computing power. Having hot swappable computing modules gives VA the ability to resolve hardware failures with little or no downtime. Only HP server blades have the physical and electrical connections to plug into the HP chassis. Also, the monitoring software that is used to control all the blades chassis in the environment will not work with other manufacturers server blades.

Without this additional equipment, VA will not have the capability to control all blades chassis in the environment and have no capability to failover to another cluster without significant data loss.

The aforementioned blade servers are proprietary HPE products; therefore, only HPE or its authorized resellers have the access to the proprietary data and source code necessary to provide warranty services for the hardware and software within the servers. The proprietary code is required to ensure the servers are properly operational and defects properly resolved. Access to HPE proprietary data and source code is required to properly install, configure, and provide the required warranty services on the servers and ensure all the services provided are properly configured. Failure to procure the brand name warranty rs thereby presenting an adverse risk to VINCI.

Furthermore, use of any other brand name servers would result in VA replacing the existing HP server environment, causing extensive delivery delays that would not be recovered through competition. Since the current HPE infrastructure consists of approximately 197 existing servers and numerous storage devices, the replacement cost would be estimated at greater than and the time required to procure these replacements would result in several months of downtime for the environment. Since a stable, running environment is required to support the valuable research conducted by the VA, this cost and delay is prohibitive. These estimates are based on similar previous efforts. Additionally, the delays caused by having to replace the existing server environment would negatively impact advancements to Veteran care that is provided by the research supported by the network this acquisition is intended to support.

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 ca requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. 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 Federal Business Opportunities Page (FBO) 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: Market research was conducted in April and May of 2021 hnical experts via internet-based research. The Government s technical experts reviewed similar solutions from vendors such as Dell, Acer, and IBM. Though these vendors offered similar solutions no other solution can meet the requirement to integrate seamlessly with the current environment. This required equipment must fit and be compatible in the existing HPE environment. In addition to these findings, and during the same timeframe, hnical experts reached out to Dell, Acer, and IBM for information on server equipment. Vendors were provided with the precise data center specifics and were asked to identify servers to expand the existing VINCI environment. The results of the market research confirmed that only HPE or an authorized reseller has the capability of providing servers that are compatible with the existing infrastructure. Dell, IBM, and Acer were found to be incompatible with the existing infrastructure and have agreed with the assessment. Furthermore, the market research results indicate that only HPE and resellers of HPE products can provide warranty on the HPE servers as no other manufacturer has the required access to HPE proprietary data and source code.

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:

VINCI Director, OIT Signa

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 NASA SEWP V contract pricing that has already been determined to be fair and reasonable. In addition, price competition is expected amongst the NASA SEWP V contract holders which will further establish fair and reasonable pricing. Finally, price analysis shall be conducted by comparing the successful quote with the Independent Government Estimate.

Contracting Officer Signa

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

Contracting Officer Signat

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of HPE brand name blades, frames and associated hardware and software, maintenance, warranty, implementation and installation service, on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in paragraph 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: ____________ Signature

Advocate for Competition Technology Acquisition Center

Office of Procurement Acquisition and Logistics