RFP 15-008 Disaster Recovery - QA - final.docx

RFP 15-008 Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Questions and Answers

Answers provided for all questions received through deadline and at the pre-bid meeting.

1. What is the desired timeframe for project commencement/deployment and final completion?

Please provide the required “go live” date for this solution

Answer: The core systems, Banner, Exchange and the WAN need to be in place before the end of June, 2015. More peripheral systems can be later, but all should be in place by December 1, 2015.

2. Can CCCS agree to a term longer than 1 year with terms that if funding is not approved by the state of Colorado CCCS can opt out of the contract?

Is the 1 year term negotiable?

What is the anticipated length of this solution contract?

Answer: CCCS intends to award a contract with terms of 1 year with automatic renewals for four years making this a total 5 year contract. The automatic renewals will be subject to funding provisions.

3. What level of management and support does CCCS expect from the vendor? E.g. space, power & connectivity - infrastructure resources, hypervisor, OS, application and database management, etc.

Answer: CCCS will continue to support the applications, OS and database as currently is done in house. Vendor should support space, power, connectivity, hardware. Some efforts will be joint support to ensure application compatibility and best practices. Vendor provided hardware in the hosting location will be supported by the vendor for hardware failures but configurations will need to be managed by CCCS.

4. Does CCCS expect that the vendor will supply and own all required physical infrastructure required to provide DR (OPEX) or will CCCS procure and own the physical assets (CAPEX)?

Answer: Yes. Except for the redundant backup system, some physical servers and appliances that are currently owned by CCCS which can be reallocated at any point in time.

5. What LAN speeds does CCCS require? 1Gbps/10Gbps

Answer: LAN speeds could be either 1Gbps or 10Gbps depending on the application and physical/virtual device.

6. What is CCCS’s current solution for malware protection, phishing protection, SPAM protection and prevention of illegal P2P file downloads?

Answer: CCCS currently uses FireEye appliances for Malware and E-Mail phishing attacks, Cisco IronPorts for SPAM protection and Exinda traffic shapers for protection from illegal P2P file downloads.

7. Confirming the requirement that the vendor will “own” the circuits originating/terminating into the colocation for the redundant ring.

Answer: Yes. Any hardware necessary to complete the redundant ring along with circuits required for the connectivity will belong to the Vendor, however CCCS will manage the hardware for the connectivity around the ring. (Layer 2 Connections). Additionally these connections must be diverse on entrance to the facilities as well as between the facilities.

8. What is the current version for Active Directory and Exchange?

Answer: Active Directory is currently running in 2008 R2 domain and forest functional levels. Exchange is 2010 Enterprise

9. Is Active Directory operating in Native or Mixed Mode?

Answer: Native Mode

10. If mixed what are the other versions of AD?

Answer: N/A (See item 9)

11. How many mail stores are in the current Exchange environment?

Answer: We are running Exchange 2010 and there are no mail stores in Exchange 2010. There are currently 13 active mailbox databases and 24 passive databases

12. How many user mailboxes are in the environment?

Answer: Approximately 18,000.

13. What device is currently providing load balancing/application content switching for Exchange?

Answer: Cisco ACE 20 modules in a Cisco Catalyst 6504 chassis

14. What is the current “offsite equipment” that will be relocated to the colo?

Answer: EMC Avamar / Data Domain, Cisco UCS C series servers (for DNS), Cisco IronPort Appliance. All CCCS equipment will be housed in a single EMC 19” rack.

15. Can CCCS provide total space and power requirements?

Answer: CCCS can only provide power and space requirements for CCCS owned equipment to be installed on site.

16. Please define the required connection methods for the “outside systems”. E.g. internet, private circuit, site to site VPN, etc.

Answer: Outside systems will be Internet connectivity for redundancy and several Site to Site VPN connections to externally hosted systems. Must be able to support our existing Class B address space

17. Does CCCS require additional security at the colo cabinet level above a standard combination lock? E.g. proximity card reader, biometric, etc.

Answer: Yes. CCCS equipment should be secured using proximity card access, with 24x7 video surveillance monitoring of the site and the equipment racks.

18. Anticipated Total KW draw on customer’s equipment in the Co Lo

Answer: This should never exceed 5KW within the single Rack.

19. How many cabinets does the customer expect to need in the Co Lo

Answer: We will be housing only one rack that is owned by CCCS all other equipment and racks will be provided by vendor.

20. Does customer need dedicated space such as a Cage

Answer: Dedicated space is not necessary except for customer provided equipment rack.

21. What Power Circuits would the customer need to be delivered to each Cabinet? 30 Amp 208v? 3 Phase 30 Amp 208v; 20 Amp 110v

Answer: The customer provided equipment rack will require two L6-30 outlets for PDU connections. Under 5KvA will be required.

22. Does the customer have a budget on the # of expected Remote Hands/Smart Hands service they need at the Co Lo

Answer: Please explain what Remote Hands/Smart Hands are. No tape retention is required at DR location. However remote assistance may be occasionally necessary to allow for third party support access or replacement of failed hard drive, etc.

23. What will be the environment for the stuff at the Co Lo? Only DR? or Test Dev? Or some Primary Production

Answer: Not sure we understand the question, but Primary Production, Test and Development need to be available.

24. Please clarify page 17 where is references “must be compliant with Cisco Power Network standards”. Does this mean the provider needs to be a Cisco Powered Service Provider?

Answer: Yes. Provider needs to be a Cisco Powered Service Provider. So we can leverage existing Cisco infrastructure.

25. What Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are you looking for?

Answer: There should be no data loss whatsoever. Banner and Exchange need to be real time in terms of data redundancy.

26. Can you prioritize your applications in terms of Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)?

Answer: Banner, WAN and Exchange should be as close to instantaneous as possible. Other systems may take longer, however no system should exceed 4 hours.

From the RFP:

It is the intent of CCCS to minimize to the extent possible technically and financially, any down time associated with a failure at its current data center location and have a secure, stable and robust location where these systems can continue to operate as required by the colleges.

27. What level of systems management is CCCS looking for, for these systems?

0. Fully Hosted and Managed

0. Management of the replication technology

0. Network management

0. OS management

0. Database management

0. Application management

0. SAN management

Answer: See response in question 3

28. Please provide some insights as to what CCCS sees as a “Hybrid equipment model”

Answer: Vendor will provide Server Hardware, SAN Hardware, etc but CCCS will managed the VM’s and configurations for equipment.

29. What level of vendor involvement will be expected in failover testing and or actual DR management?

Answer: Vendor will need to be involved with all failover testing and DR management throughout the contract.

30. For storage, you have a total capacity of 273 TB, with 123TB of data stored. From spreadsheet there are approximately 40TB of data for Ellucian/Banner and Exchange environments. Do you want replication limited to the approximate 40TB for those 2 apps or replication for the 123TB? What is your estimated storage growth rate?

Answer: The 40TB of data is the size for Production Banner and Exchange only. If services other than production are necessary we would need to replicate more data and could possibly need to replicate the entire stored data. The Banner database is growing approximately 40GB per month.

31. We need the NPA/NXX for Lowry, Westminster, Centennial (Colo Spgs), Pueblo

Answer: Lowry is 720/858, Westminter is 303/404, Colorado Springs Centennial is 719/502 and Pueblo is 719/562

32. What is the physical footprint of the DR site Data Domain/Avamar. How much rack space to they take and what are the power requirements?

Answer: A single 19” rack with two L6-30 receptacles.

33. For EMC storage, do you currently have Recover Point appliances?

Answer: No. It must be included in the proposal if Recovery Point is required.

34. Are any of the servers to be recovered physical? If so how many, and do they need to stay physical based on the application?

Answer: Currently only our Oracle servers are physical. We are open to changing these to virtual servers

35. Are there tier 2/3 applications that you may want to add at a later time?

Answer: A spreadsheet of DEV and TEST systems is attached in addendum A along with future systems that will be present in the DR/BC site.

36. We want to confirm that the scope of recovery is 44 Banner servers and 16 Exchange servers out of the total 330 server environment.

Answer: We want recovery of all our Production systems. These are production systems only.

37. What are the testing expectations for this solutions – what is the frequency, what resources do you require to support the test, and what are planned testing duration?

Answer: Testing should occur no less than quarterly. SME’s will be required from both CCCS and the vendor in case of a failure or un-expected result. Long enough to fail over successfully and fail back successfully.

38. Do you have SRM licenses?

Answer: No.

39. Do you have BC & DR plans, or procedures for application and infrastructure recovery for current environment?

Answer: We have procedures for application and infrastructure recovery but do not have current BC or DR plans.

40. Is there a preference on SPAM and Malware solutions?

Answer: Yes. They should be the same as the devices currently used by CCCS. See information in question 6.

41. Is the redundant network requirement for a full 10G from the DR location to Lowry, Westminster, Pueblo and Centennial?

Answer: Yes.

42. What service providers have points of presences now or are planned to provide connectivity to the Lowry, Westminster, Pueblo and Centennial sites?

Answer: Lowry has Century Link and Unite Private Networks, All others have Century Link only with the exception of Pueblo which also has Unite and SECOM.

43. Can you identify which servers listed on the included Banner and Exchange resource list are physical? Which are Virtual?

Answer: Physical servers are: Oracle Database servers, INB, SSB. All others are Virtual.

44. Do the physical servers in the production environment need to be physical servers in the DR environment?

Answer: No.

45. Do we need to match compute resources (CPU, RAM and Storage allocation) listed on the Banner and Exchange infrastructure list 1 to 1?

Answer: Yes

46. Can the servers listed in the RFP operate at multiple performance levels in the DR environment. If so, what levels of performance (in IOPS) is required?

Answer: That is based on the application. Some applications will not need as many IOPS as Oracle servers would, etc. Would need to have the ability to grow during maximum performance times around registrations.

47. How much of the 10GB point to point bandwidth will be utilized on a daily basis? (Back up data, replication data transfer estimates)

Answer: Unknown as they do not exist today and current circuits being utilized for this are being stressed.

48. We are assuming network infrastructure installed at CCCS locations to support 10GB point to points will be owned by CCCS, is that a correct assumption? (Firewalls, switches, routers, IPs, etc.)

Answer: No the routers that will be necessary for the redundant ring will be owned by the vendor with CCCS managing and configuring them. Ring will have to be diverse.

49. What software licensing will need to be provided by the vendor?

Answer: Depends on the solution provided by the vendor. CCCS will provide Oracle licenses and licenses for applications running in the environment.

50. In section 3.2.1, question 4, Email Services- Do you require an “always on” configuration?

Answer: Yes. Primary Email will be housed at CCCS with DAG copies and redundant CAS/HUB servers located in the DR/BC site.

51. In section 3.2.1, question 4, Email Services – It is indicated that the production Exchange servers are physical servers. Can these servers be virtual in the DR environment?

Answer: All production exchange servers are currently virtual servers.

52. In section 3.2.1, question 5, mentions all systems need to run in a VMWare ESXi environment, does that include Oracle?

Answer: Yes if Oracle servers become virtualized.

53. In section 3.2.3 question 5, it is mentioned that offsite equipment would be relocated to the DR/BC facility. Can you provide detailed specifications on that equipment?

Answer: See question 14

54. (Section 2.15, Proposal Prices) Does the CCCS have a budget defined for this project? If so, is the budget broken down into infrastructure versus services (DR / BC planning)?

Answer: The budget is not broken down.

55. (Section 4.1, Alliances & Strategic Relationships) Are vendors to declare their relationships with these companies from an experience perspective or are there concerns about any potential conflict of interest with the named companies?

Answer: No.

56. (Section 4.1, Corporate Profile) Does the requirement for identifying the management team refer to just the primary bidder or is the CCCS looking for information of the management team associated with the co-location service as well?

Answer: If there is a subcontractor or co-bidder, that management team must be identified as well. Any subcontractors or co-bidders must be clearly identified.

57. (General) Has the CCCS ever engaged with a DR / BC service or vendor in the past? If so, can you provide the name of that vendor and would they be allowed to submit a proposal for this opportunity?

Answer: We have not had a contract with a DR/BC service or vendor in the past. Any qualified DR/BC vendor may bid. No incumbent.

58. What are your RTO/RPO for the environment?

Answer: Zero data loss, zero downtime for Banner, Exchange and the WAN. Downtime may be allowable for Test, Development, Data Warehouse (ODS/EDW) and other systems. Data Loss is not acceptable under any circumstances.

59. Do you want the vendor to provide monitoring and management of the hardware, OS, and applications that will be utilized?

Answer: Yes for the vendor owned hardware. CCCS will monitor OS and applications.

60. Do you want vendor to manage the replication and failover to the DR environment in the event of a failure?

Answer: This depends of the solution provided, but we would expect some level of failover to be automatic, especially for Banner, Exchange and WAN. Other levels to be jointly managed or primarily managed by CCCS. Replication should be ongoing 7 x 24.

61. Would you be open to moving your email/exchange environment to a fully outsourced environment?

Answer: No

62. Do you have any HIPPA or PII requirements in the environment?

Answer: Must be FERPA compliant

63. Can the vendor use a shared platform model for certain components?

Answer: A shared platform may be used however CCCS data cannot be housed with other company’s data on the same systems.

64. Keith mentioned that he wanted diversity on the 10GB point to points, does that include physical diversity (dual entrance on opposite sides of the building) at each location?

Answer: Physical diversity on the fiber paths between locations and the entrances into the buildings. Entrances into the buildings must maintain a minimum 25 feet of separation. Paths between locations must not be within the same fiber path or in the same sheath.

65. Is there a specific Router model CCCS would prefer and will the routers be installed onsite at each location or can they be “plug and play”?

Answer: We are looking at either a ASR1000 series or a ASR9000 series. Either platform must have redundancy in the chassis as well as the ability to perform in service upgrades without dropping traffic to any interfaces. These devices must also have a minimum of two 1 gb interfaces to allow connectivity to the local networks at each CCCS campus location.

66. Due to the holidays, would CCCS consider extending the submittal deadline?

Answer: In order to accommodate our internal schedules and deadlines, we are not able to extend the submittal response date.