RFP 13-44 Questions 05-29-2013: Can the due date be extended 1 week? There is very little time between posting of answers and the proposal due date. We want to be sure we have sufficient time to prepare a clear concise proposal. NOTICE: This is the Final Extension in response and due to the above received request: All Sealed Bid Proposals for BCSD RFP 13-44 must now be submitted up to, but no later than the following updated Deadline via E-mail to Ms. Kathy Gray (See RFP): No Later than FRIDAY, June 7, 2013; at 2:00 PM EDT. No other extensions shall be granted. All Sealed Bid Proposals received after 2:00 PM EDT on 06/07/2013 - will be rejected. The Performance bond is addressed on Page 16 of the Solicitation. It states that the successful Contractor will be required to furnish a performance and payment bond in the amount of 100% of the contract amount. Is the amount to be 100% total for Performance and Payment? Or is the amount to be 100% for performance and 100% for Payment with a total for Performance and Payment of 200% of the contract amount? The amount is to be 100% total for Performance and Payment combined. 8.2.06 Is NDS inheritance on or off? If speaking of inheritance rights filter, that is ON. 8.2.06 Are you using Access-Based Enumeration (ABE)? If so, do you want to carry it forward to Windows Server? Yes, and carrying ABE forward must be included. 8.2.06 Is DHCP in scope for this project? Yes. If Novell is currently doing DHCP, is there one Novell server in each location who owns the TCP/IP address scope for that location or are IP addresses centrally distributed from one server? Yes, we have DHCP set up on each Server, at each school, and here at the Central Office. We also have a dedicated Windows DHCP/DNS Server. BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 1
8.2.06 How many subnets are in use at BCSD? 255.255.255.240 Class B Can you describe the entire WAN and how each site connects back to the new NOC and DR site? We have a 10 GB Fiber Hub and Spoke network Wan and Internet. Currently some schools are at 100 MB and some are at 1 GB. A project is presently ongoing to complete the upgrading of all schools from 100 MB to 1 GB before June 30, 2013. Is Microsoft Hyper-V a viable candidate for you to consider? No. If so, would you want one solution presented with a MS virtualization focus and one with a VMware focus? Both options may be submitted, each reflecting their respective pricing and costs. (C) If Hyper-V is an acceptable alternative some questions are 1. Are you currently running VMware, if so what version(s)? Is Virtual Center in use? 5.1.0.5200, Build 880472 2. How many vcenters? 1 3. How many esxi hosts? 7 4. How many total VM s? 25 5. Any P2V (physical to virtual server) migrations? Possibly 4 or 5 6. 7. How many existing servers are currently in use Physical/Virtual? Physical is still in discovery, 20 Virtual so far 8. Are P2V or V2V migrations of existing (ongoing) workloads to the new Virtual Environment to be considered in scope? We have Volume license agreements in place. 9. Are any of the Physical Servers deployed using OEM licensing? Yes, but still in discovery Are any of the servers to be migrated running Linux or other non-windows OS? Yes, Sles 10 and Sles 11. Do any of the to be virtualized Physical servers rely on HW devices, (USB, SCSI, Parallel) device attachments which may require alternate solutions? No. Do you have a current Microsoft agreement(school, EES, etc.)? No. If not, do you want us to provide a quote for a new Microsoft agreement? No. What is the level of QoS on the WAN? High Quality, support provided by top communications carrier. BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 2
What is the district s email retention policy, when will that change and are we responsible for the data with the old policy or the new policy? Currently there isn't one, but we will be creating email policies as part of this project. Archiving old data; Retention, Backup and recovery of new data. Can we freeze certain aspects of the network while it is replicating (data migration)? Yes Do you have a list of which locations have summer school or will have availability (access) issues? Yes Will we need to work overnight and on weekends? No How many physical servers do you want us to migrate to VMware? Approximately 50 Servers Can you provide a list of server applications that will be virtualized in the NOC? Yes, but currently we are still in discovery mode Of your 35 Windows servers you currently have, what are you currently using those servers for? Active Directory Domain, Applications, e-mail, File and Print On your Novell and Windows Servers in the scope of this RFP, can you provide what version of OS each is running? Netware 6.5, Windows 2003, and Windows 2008 On your Windows servers, do you have a list of how much data we re migrating from each server? In discovery mode Do you currently run any versions of VMware, if so, what vsphere version? Running esx 2 and esx 5 8.2.06 Will any additional users beyond the 4500 migrated from NDS need to be bulk loaded as new users into Active Directory Domain Services? We currently have a small Active Directory Environment and would like to see proposals moving us to a new AD environment If so, how many? Approximately 3,000 more casual Users in addition to the 4,500 full time employees. If so, will you be able to provide the vendor with a CSV file containing the users properties who need to be added? We have a listing of all Users 8.2.06 What is the quantity (a number) of the NetWare file servers Volumes that will need to be migrated? 6 to 8 8.2.06 Will all 22,500 Windows client computers need to be joined to the Active Directory Domain Services domain by the completion of this project? Yes 8.2.06 Can you please provide a list of the applications that are authenticating against NDS and what protocol they are using to do so? Novell GroupWise 8.2.06 What are your year over year growth projections (numerical) for any User who BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 3
would be in the Active Directory Domain Services directory? To be determined, minimized as much as feasible... 8.2.06 What are your year over year growth projections (numerical) for domain-joining Windows clients to Active Directory Domain Services directory? Minimal, to be determined. 8.02.06 How many megabytes or gigabytes of data will the students be allocated (a quota) to store their files on your file servers? 500 MB 8.02.06 Do you want to block any specific file types (e.g. MP3) on the new file servers? Yes, some files will need to be secured. 8.06 WARRANTY V. Contractor shall guarantee all materials, equipment, etc., for three (3) years from date of substantial completion of work. This guarantee shall include labor, material, and travel time and all other costs. What is the level of response time you are looking for on the hardware? 4 hours? Next business day? Immediate telephone support, and on site within next Business day if necessary. W. All Network Operations Centers, materials, and labor shall be under warranty for 36 months from date of final acceptance by Owner. This warranty shall be included as part of Contractor s scope, and must be provided at no additional expense to the Owner. Can you expand what you mean by labor? Any required Physical labor or effort. Is labor related only to hardware purchases? Any required Physical labor or effort. We cannot warrant our configuration services on the deployment/migration of software/data past completion/knowledge transfer/signoff + 30 days. Is this acceptable? Yes, with support. Disaster Recovery is referred to but was not clearly stated in the RFP as to the intentions of the BCSD what the SLA for recovery of failure would be. a. What is the desired SLA for cut over to the DR? Momentarily and automatically cutover upon main NOC loss; - including Manual and override capabilities. b. Do you wish to have active/active or active/passive DR solution? Provide a quote for both as separate options; and include separate respective costs and pricing for each option. c. Automatic or manual cut over? Primarily Automatic, - with manual control capabilities.. How many SQL Server instances do you currently have? Still doing discovery, To Be Determined ( TBD ) at onset of project. BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 4
a. What SQL Server version level and edition for each? Microsoft SQL Server 2012 License b. What Windows Server version level and edition for each? Windows Server 2008 R2 c. How many databases per instance? TBD Rough size in MB or GB? TBD d. Are the instances currently running on physical servers or virtual? Both. 2. Are instances currently configured as clusters or any type of replication? No, not to our knowledge. 3. Are we looking to consolidate the SQL Server instances, databases, or just consolidate at the virtual host level? At the present time, we are considering consolidation of nearly all of the Physical Server, and some Virtual Servers to achieve a better performing paradiem. 4. What backup/recovery solution is in place today? Seeking a new solution 5. Do we simply need a backup/recovery solution or are we looking for a high availability and disaster recovery solution? Yes, a complete backup/recovery solution is needed. 6. What RTO/RPO is necessary for each instance/database? The BCSD doesn t have a viable solution at the present time. Vendor should be designing their Backup and Recovery solution as if none exists at all. 7. What archiving solution is in place today? Email archive solution is Datacove. 8. Is there an expected interval and amount of data that would be archived? Datacove archive has 12 GB of data resident. 9. Will you provide a list of the specific software licenses you will need? Yes. Will Bibb County Schools award a portion of the bid? Possibly. However, it the the intent to award every aspect of the RFP to some vendor or vendors to complete the entire scope contained therein. To what extent will Bibb County Schools consider a cloud based solution? For our NOC, this is not a consideration. May possibly be considered for other applications. What is the current technology footprint? Nothing significatnt is online at the co-location (new) NOC at the present time. What brand of server, network, routers, switches and PC s does the district own today? Dell, HP Cisco, and Juniper. What are the top 5 applications running in the district? Accounting, E-Mail, Payroll Human Resources, Student Support applications What is the targeted RPO and RTO for the district? BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 5
What types of OS s are running? Windows, Novell, Linux, ios, and Android. Ultimately, Windows will fully displace all Novell from our system; with minimal Linux, and with ios and Android on handheld devices. What are the total number of physical servers today? 70, increasing to approximately 300 by July 31, 2014. What are the total number of virtual machines today? Several, this is still in discovery TBD. What is the target percentage of virtual machines vs. physical machines at end of deployment? We are presently projecting 70% virtual machines, 30% physical machines. What is the expected growth in virtual machines each year? Minimal, only a few per year. Will the storage connectivity be fibre channel, ISCSi, NFS, FCoE, or all of the above? This depends upon the overall solution presented and proposed. Could be all, or a selection. Cisco has servers that can accomplish 256GB+ RAM with two processors would that be a benefit? The BCSD is open to viable solutions that meet or exceed the minimum stated requirements in the RFP. If any alternative is proposed, it must be able to do same, and demonstrate this effectively within their response. How many NICs/HBA's are required per server? Since ESX can do NIC teaming, failover, and multi-pathing for both iscsi and the LAN side of things, the total number of Network Interface Cards / Host Bus Adapters would be solely dependent upon your design requirement for them. Network connectivity (what type of northbound LAN services) 1G/10G? 10G a requirement moving forward? We will have a 1 GB, and two 10 GBs sized communications lines for WAN and Internet. Yes, 10 GBs is a future possibility. (presently we still have some 100 MB connections as well). What type of core switching is used for server connectivity? Are the core switches doing both L2/L3? Again, this is dependent upon your chosen hardware design and configuration. Are they using port-channeling for server connectivity? If your proposed solution is so designed, and can be considered for load balancing, dual-homed, Fallback, Link Aggregation, control protocol, etc. BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 6
Questions regarding these matters, and related to RFP #13-44 should be addressed via E-mail to: Kathy Gray, Purchasing Agent Bibb County School District 484 Mulberry Street, Suite 225 Macon, GA 31201 (478) 779-3529 Office (478) 779-3531 Fax E-mail: kgray.purchasing@bibb.k12.ga.us End of BCSD RFP#: 13-44 - Page 7