Information systems and servers

Tender description

Southway is looking to select an organisation who can implement a Fully Resilient ICT Infrastructure Solution which includes all the required network connectivity between the servers proposed storage solution and network edge switches and wireless access points. Southway is looking to select an organisation who can implement a Fully Resilient ICT Infrastructure Solution which includes all the required network connectivity between the servers proposed storage solution and network edge switches and wireless access points. The storage solution needs to be able maximise storage efficiencies, be scalable, be fully resilient in design both locally and across the primary and backup sites. It is a requirement that the storage device at Primary is fully populated with SSD's and does not contain any SAS or SATA drives. Over the life of the solution we expect will need 45TB's of usable storage, however outset we estimate we will only require 16 TB's of usable storage. To ensure the solution is future proof we are looking for the core network / SAN networking to have high speed interconnects (minimum of 10 Gb ISCSI / 16 GB FC is required and the value of deploying higher bandwidths will be considered.) Note: Current Server to SAN connectivity is 1 Gbps ISCSI. The primary site will be located at Southway's new Head office (Southern Gate, 729 Princess Road, Manchester, M20 2LT) and this will host the main ICT Infrastructure. The Backup location will be installed in an external location. Note: Currently, Southway rent rack space from LDEX in Manchester where their current backup infrastructure is located. The existing Infrastructure, including the VMware environment and Citrix environment will need to be migrated and upgraded to the latest versions of software; currently Southway has VMware VSphere 5.1.0 Standard Edition, VCenter, and Citrix XenApp 6, both these products have Software Assurance. The primary and backup locations are currently setup in a high availability mode to ensure that no single component failure would prevent any system / service availability. This level of resilience is required for the proposed solution. The solution needs to have the capability to failover to the backup site and have the capability to easily fallback to the primary site. The proposed solution must enable Southway to achieve a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) within 4 hours for all the main business systems and supporting Infrastructure. The proposed solution must provide a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour for all the data stored on the proposed storage solution. Therefore, in addition to the estimated 45TB's of usable storage the SAN must provide over 5 years, it also needs to accommodate the storage needs for Recovery Point Data. Southway's existing backup system enables them to backup multiple servers in parallel and recover data quickly, the existing solution enables them to hold on disk backups for up to 30 days (on the HP SAN), long term archiving of data is transferred to an LTO Tape Based system. A more modern and agile, backup and recovery solution is required for the new ICT Infrastructure. The current server and storage solution will be 5 years old in October 2017 after which it will not be covered under maintenance. Southway are open to all options for delivering their requirements, but the decision on what is selected will be heavily weighted on the cost of the complete solution over the full 5 years. Southway has invested heavily in training its IT staff on being able to maintain, operate and support the existing IT Environment; Training and handover on the new solution will need to be delivered as part of the solution. Full documentation for the implemented solution will be required. Full proof of tests performed during the commissioning of the solution will be required. Latest software licenses for the proposed solution are required and this includes Microsoft (server, application and desktop), Virtualisation, Thin Client. Note: Southway don't have any Software Assurance in place for their Microsoft software estate and do not envisage requiring this in the future. Southway may need a support service for the solution.