Archive network attached storage

Tender description

Lot 1: The Wide Field Astronomy Unit has secured additional funding in order to further expand the high density compute server over the next 1-2 year period with the project to be completed by 2024. The increase does not exceed 50% of the initial contract value. The additional supplies and services required were not included in the initial procurement and a change of supplier cannot be made for technical reasons. The original market investigation of the compute server suppliers showed that only Eclipse Computing can provide equipment matching the technical requirements for The Wide Field Astronomy Unit high density storage needs. The data centre is space limited and requires a very rack dense configuration of network attached storage devices. An NCA was approved on this basis in 2020. The contract modification would ensure interoperability with existing equipment procured under the initial procurement. A change of supplier for the final phase of the server expansion would cause significant inconvenience and substantial duplication of costs for The Wide Field Astronomy Unit. Introducing new technical specifications would require re-engineering of the existing server solution and added administrative and software development workloads on already time-limited staff. Any new equipment specifications would require retooling existing service deployment and operations code. Even allowing for additional time and expense it is not guaranteed as to whether another supplier would be able to achieve our technical requirements and space constraints.