Request for Proposal for Backup Medium

(1)

1

Request for Proposal for Backup Medium

Vermont Energy Investment Corporation

06/07/2012

(2)

2

RFP Definition

Organizational Background

The Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) is a mission-driven nonprofit organization, founded in 1986, that is dedicated to reducing the economic, social, and environmental costs of energy consumption through cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy

technologies.

VEIC operates a number of major energy efficiency programs, including Efficiency Vermont, the nation's first statewide energy efficiency utility; Efficiency Smart, which serves numerous

municipal utilities in the United States mid-west; and the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, which serves the District of Columbia.

In addition to implementation services, VEIC consults nationally and internationally to design energy efficiency and renewable energy programs; develops energy policy; and advocates for its passage in local, regional, national, and international forums.

VEIC has been experiencing a period of rapid organizational growth. We currently have 315 employees in all locations and expect this number to increase throughout the years. VEIC largest facility is located in Burlington, Vermont and has regional offices in Ohio, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.

Description

VEIC’s Infrastructure Team is leading an internal infrastructure effort to replace our existing backup medium with an Exagrid EX10000E backup solution.

Additionally, VEIC expects to replace our existing SAN infrastructure to better support our ongoing growth. This will be part of a separate RFP process to be issues at a later date.

Objectives

VEIC has spent several months evaluating backup solutions and has selected Exagrid as our preferred partner. Exagrid provides the same basic functionality of several other vendors however their support systems are aligned with VEIC’s needs and expectations. VEIC seeks to acquire the services of a qualified retail vendor who will work directly with Exagrid to get us the most aggressive pricing possible. VEIC being a non-profit, it is very important that we get the best systems we can for the best price.

Eligible Systems and Solutions

VEIC intends to install a backup medium solution manufactured by the following company:

(4)

4

Project Goals

VEIC’s primary goal is to replace our existing Dell Powervault TL2000 LTO4 tape loader with an eligible Exagrid EX10000E device designed to meet existing and future growth needs.

Additional goals for the solution include:

 Solution to support 25% growth per year for the next three years.

 Solution will be scalable to support an increase of 300% in staff size and the addition of several new physical locations.

 Replacement system shall be installed and functional within the timeline defined in this RFP.

 Retail vendor should work with Exagrid to maintain in place existing demo unit

 Support structure and warranty shall be clearly defined, with training and resources available to support basic system administration by IT

Budget

VEIC has a proposed budget of $50,000 for this project, which is expected to satisfy requirements. These include hardware, software, and consulting services costs required to successfully complete this effort. This budget does not include VEIC labor which will be used to participate in any phases of this effort.

Scope and Guidelines

The scope of this project is to create a fully functional, scalable Disk Backup System for VEIC which meets the overall objectives of this effort as defined in this RFP.

Proposals should assume that the vendor will provide the labor to design, procure, install, and provide administrative and end user training for this effort. Proposals should also include details. VEIC will provide all respondents with any information required to successfully prepare a

proposal which will meet our needs.

Responses should address all the specific questions included in the sections General System Design and Costs, System Information and Functions Capabilities, and Functionality Checklists.

RFP Schedule

Electronic copies of your proposal must be received by 5:00 PM EST on Friday, June 22nd, 2012.

(5)

5

RFP Phase Finish By Date

RFP issued Monday 6/11/12

Questions due Friday 6/15/12

Answers to declared respondents Monday 6/18/12

RFPs due Friday 6/22/12

Final candidate selection Friday 6/22/12

Finalist interviews and limited system demonstrations Friday 6/22/12

Winner selection Tuesday 6/26/12

Winner notification Wednesday 6/27/12

Contracts negotiation Thursday 6/28/12

System install target Monday 7/1/12

This schedule of phases is subject to change and shall not be binding.

Questions

Respondents may contact VEIC for clarification and information pertaining to this request for proposal. Any requests for information or clarification must be submitted in writing by e-mail to Todd Weightman at [email protected] and Ryan Gauthier at [email protected] before the end of the question period.

Questions and answers will be emailed or faxed to all bidders who have completed and returned the completed Intent to Bid form.

Final Review and Selection

Upon review of the RFP responses, VEIC will select the retail vendor with the highest score based on the Evaluation of Proposal criteria.

References

Please supply at least three (3) references that have used your professional services for a similar project.

(6)

6

Evaluation of Proposals

Proposal selection will be based on qualifications and the provision of the highest value to VEIC. Proposals will be evaluated on the following criteria:

 Proposed response adherence to the needs and requirements as defined (10 points)

 Proposed system’s overall capabilities and scalability (10 points)

 Vendor’s demonstrated experience and expertise implementing projects of similar size and scale (10 points)

 Vendor’s demonstrated ability to support the proposed system and VEIC (10 points)

 Overall proposed solution’s cost competitiveness at installation and including consideration of growth and support (20 points)

Final selection will include the above criteria:

VEIC reserves the right to not award a contract should none of the proposals adequately address the requirements outlined in the RFP.

Description of Current Technology

VEIC is currently running a single Dell Powervault TL2000 LTO 4 tape library with a 24 tape capacity in our Williston Vermont data center. This system was purchased and installed in 2008 and no longer supports our data retention requirements.

Offices

1 Central office located in Burlington, Vermont and 2 regional Offices located in Columbus, Ohio and Washington, DC.

Each regional office is connected to VEIC’s primary colocation center in Williston, Vermont via a dedicated 20/30 Mbs point-to-point Ethernet connection, with a secondary commercial internet connection for backup.

Our primary office is connected to our Williston data center via dedicated fast Ethernet, with a secondary commercial internet connection for backup.

(7)

7

Server and Network Storage Information

 Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis

 Dell PowerEdge M610 Blade Servers

 Dell PowerConnect M6384 Integrated Switches(for SAN / Blade Traffic)

 Cisco 3750E switches (Primary back bone and core routing)

 Dell Equallogic SANS (PS6000, PS5000, PS4000, PS100)

VEIC Data Type Breakout

 Total raw data 4.1 terabytes

 Exchange 2007 30% of total

 SQL Server Data 20% of total

 SharePoint 5% of total

 Raw files (doc, images, spreadsheets, Access databases) 35% of total

 OS and system files 10% of total

Office Staffing Levels

Staffing and space estimates at the time of implementation:

 Burlington, Vermont o FTE (235)  Columbus, Ohio o FTE (30)  Washington, DC o FTE (20)

 Additional Remote staff (40)

General System Design and Costs

General System Design

Please include in your RFP response a general system design which addresses the following needs:

 Backup disk solution to support 4.1 terabytes of current system usage

 Backup disk solution to support 25% growth per year over the next three years

 Backup disk solution to be scalable to 300% growth

 Disk solution at end of three years still maintains three month retention

(8)

8

Cost Estimates

 Please include in your RFP response an estimate of costs including material (software and hardware) costs as defined in the General System Design, labor for installation, training and estimates costs for 3 years of system support.

 If the solution required to allow 3rd party software integration includes costs please provide estimates for that.

System Information and Functions Capabilities

Redundancy and Reliability

 Please describe how the solution is designed to tolerate hardware failures.

 Please describe how the solution ensures maximum system uptime.

Vendor Support Structure

 Please detail your organization’s support staff size, amount of training and years of experience supporting the technology that are part of the recommended solution.

 Describe any standard SLA agreements you provide to customers under support.

 Please describe how support contracts are provisioned and how support is priced

Functionality Checklists

Feature Supported Comments and or Limitations

Scalable for 300% growth

Supports de-duplication technology

Utilizes post backup process de-duplication vs. inline.

Disk redundancy with hot swap capabilities

Ability to replicate to an offsite appliance

Ability to replicate to the cloud

Product should have mechanism to maintain backup windows while increasing data size.

Decrease backup window compared to current backup time (12 hours)

Ability to archive to tape post process

Ease of management - set it and forget it

Compatible with VMware

Compatible with Veeam

Simple management interface - RUI

(9)

Request for Proposal for Backup Medium