Inactive Total Small Business Set-Aside (FAR 19.5)

Please see the attached solicitation for details. Amendment #1: The purpose of this amendment is to provide Government responses to industry questions as detailed below: Q1. I noticed the solicitation... Please see the attached solicitation for details. Amendment #1: The purpose of this amendment is to provide Government responses to industry questions as detailed below: Q1. I noticed the solicitation keeps saying brand name intel processors, is there a brand name compute node you’re looking to be quoted with those processors? A1. Intel is the required Brand Name component. There are no additional Brand Name requirements. Q2. Do you want QP 10GbE or DP 25GbE? You list either/or. Or is this simply a comment to be ignored, as the next line asks for DP 10GbE with SFP+ Connectors? A2. The requirement is a minimum dual port 10Gb SFP+ Network adapter. The SFP+ refers to the type of connectors. The line rate or speed of the card must be 10Gb per connector (simultaneously). The vendor could supply a faster connection if they choose to do so. Q3. Why do you want an INTERNAL DVD on each and every compute node? A3. A large number of servers stacked up in a rack makes it very difficult to plug in a DVD to get the system to boot. There are a lot of wires in back and plugging into the front USB ports is not always reliable as sometimes these ports will not let you boot from them with an external DVD/CD. This makes life easier as SSD drives have limited write cycles. Q4. Why do you want USB ports on both the front and the rear? A4. Front USB ports are very convenient to connect to a system that may be experiencing issues. Front USB ports and VGA ports are convenient for system maintenance and firmware upgrades. Q5. Why do you need VGA ports on both the front and the rear? A5. VGA ports in front and the rear is standard on most system/server models. This makes it very easy to troubleshoot a specific system without going behind the rack and getting tangled up with many, many wires. Q6. Why do you need an 8GB RAID Cache (rather than 2GB or 4GB, when you are only installing a SINGLE 480GB SSD? A6. The system requirement is for a single SSD drive of at least 480GB in size. The Government will be adding/experimenting with GPU accelerators in these systems to support some mathematical computational analysis. When that happens, system hard drives will then be reconfigured to use RAID1 to increase fault tolerance. The RAID Cache is required to support the additional write workloads that these systems will be performing. Also, additional hard drives may be required on several of these systems/nodes as they may be required to become small temporary file servers for the remaining nodes. RAID is used throughout the computing industry. Q7. An industry question was asked about drive bay support. A7. There are many solutions/alternatives for drive bay support and additional drive bays provide great flexibility. This system requires the flexibility to accommodate additional storage as a contingency in the event that file server cannot keep up with the compute nodes. The additional drives would then be populated with drives, RAID5 would most likely be used and a staging fileserver could then be integrated into our solution. Q8. Why are you mandating a 1U Form Factor, as by default you have chosen the most inefficient design possible (36U of Rack Space with 72 Power Cords). A8. A 1U Form Factor is very common and standard in this computing space. Q9. The minimum specifications lists "Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux" as a requirement. Does that mean the server just simply needs to support Red Hat Linux or do you need the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed on the server? A9. The server simply needs to support Red Hat Linux, it does not need to be installed. All other terms and conditions remain unchanged Amendment #2: The pupose of this amendment is to provide Government responses to industry questions: Q10. Are the 2 USB ports being in back required, instead of 2 in the front? A10. As stated on the Government Minimum Requirements, the following is required; - Minimum 2x USB 3.0 or higher ports on rear of chassis is required and - Available USB 3.0 port on front of chassis is required. Q11. Are the 2 VGA ports being 1 in front & 1 in back required, instead of 2 in front? A11. As stated on the Government Minimum Requirements, Minimum 2x VGA port interfaces one on both front and back of chassis is required. Q12. Is 8GB RAID controller required as opposed to 4GB RAID controller? A12. As stated on the Government Minimum Requirements, Minimum 8GB RAID Controller Card with NV Cache is required. Q13. What type of GPU cards will the end user need support for? A13. The Government will most likely use NVIDIA Tesla GPU Q14. Are 8 x 2.5" drives mandatory? A14. Yes, the 8x2.5” drive bays are required Q15. X8 SATA/SAS or x8 NVME? Need choose one, cannot both combine. A15. The system requirement is that the computer must have front drive support for up to 8 2.5” SAS or SATA drives or 8 NVMe drives. We will not be filling these slots at the time of purchase, but the system must support it. Q16. 1U has a lot of limitations, as long as it has x8 SATA/SAS or NVME, cannot support GPU in rackmount. A16. 1U is the minimum requirement. All other terms and conditions remain unchanged. Amendment #3: The purpose of this amendment is to extend the solicitation closing date and time from 12 June 2020 at 2:00PM Eastern to 17 June 2020 at 2:00PM Eatern. All other terms and conditions remain unchanged.