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The purpose of Amendment 0001 is to publish Answers to Questions submitted in response to the RFI, as of 09 December 2020. Please see the word document attachment provided. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFOR... The purpose of Amendment 0001 is to publish Answers to Questions submitted in response to the RFI, as of 09 December 2020. Please see the word document attachment provided. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY –This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes – it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. Requests for a solicitation/solicitation status will not receive a response. This notice does not constitute a commitment by the United States Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. All information submitted in response to this announcement is voluntary; the United States Government will not pay for information requested nor will it compensate any respondent for any cost incurred in developing information provided to the United States Government. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. Acknowledgement of receipt of submitted items will not be made nor will respondents be notified of the outcome of the information received. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on the Beta.SAM. It is the responsibility of the potential respondents to monitor this site for additional information pertaining to this requirement. Responses are due by 1400 EST, 01 February 2021 and are not to exceed 15 pages. Please submit all RFI responses to the Contract Specialist – Tomisha King at tomisha.l.king.civ@mail.mil, the Contract Officer – Sabin Joseph at sabin.a.joseph.civ@mail.mil. The subject line for the email submission shall read as follows: Subject: Response to RFI W909MY-20-R-C029: PM, FPS Hardware Refresh: “Company Name” INTRODUCTION: The US Army Contracting Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground (ACC-APG) Belvoir Division, on behalf of the Product Manager, Force Protection Systems (PM, FPS) is issuing a Request for Information (RFI) in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.201(e). The purpose of this RFI is to identify potential sources with the technical capability and necessary resources to provide a hardware refresh of the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (E&MD) hardware. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE: PM FPS will require a form, fit and function technology refresh of the engineering and manufacturing development (E&MD) hardware to baseline the production and deployment hardware for its programs. This is a Market Research to survey marketplace vendors capable of providing hardware that meets PM FPS requirement. The vendor should provide environmental testing data, design specifications, some visualization e.g., graphic images of the solution offered, and estimated costs. The environment testing data is most useful if it has been done by a third party certified laboratory or ideally by a third part laboratory with government witnessing. If government witnessed test are not available, then provide the appropriate third party Point of Contact (POC). RESPONSE DUE DATE: Responses to this announcement are due NLT 90 days after release; response is via e-mail to tomisha.l.king.civ@mail.mil and sabin.a.joseph.civ@mail.mil . QUESTIONS TO THIS ANNOUNCEMENT: All questions pertaining to this announcement are due within 30 days after release via e-mail to tomisha.l.king.civ@mail.mil and sabin.a.joseph.civ@mail.mil. Telephone requests will not be accepted. If answered, questions will be non-attribution published at https://beta.sam.gov/. CONFIDENTIALITY: Interested parties are responsible for appropriately marking proprietary or competition sensitive information contained in their response. CLASSIFIED INFORMATION: No classified information should be included in your response. CLASSIFICATION Product Service Code: 5998 - Electrical And Electronic Assemblies, Boards, Cards, And Associated Hardware Place of Performance: USA NAICS Code: 334111-Electronic Computer Manufacturing, 541512-Computer Systems Design Services, 541519-Other Computer Related Services REQUIREMENTS: Vendors shall provide information on the company’s hardware solution that meet the following technical requirements; Small Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total CPU core count of two hundred and eight (208). Small Base Camp deployment GPU count shall contain a minimum aggregate total of 10 Nvidia GPUs. Small Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total of 52.476TB of usable storage. Small Base Camp deployment sustained power draw shall not exceed 3,000 W (Threshold) / 2,250 W (Objective). Medium Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total CPU core count of four hundred twenty five (425). Medium Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total of 20 Nvidia GPUs. Medium Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total of 99.996TB of usable storage. Large Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total CPU core count of eight hundred and eighty eight (888). Large Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total of 40 Nvidia GPUs. Large Base Camp deployment shall contain a minimum aggregate total of 196.246TB of usable storage. Server shall be rack mountable. Server shall have a maximum height of one rack units (1U). All components shall have a maximum depth of twenty six inches (26") (Threshold) / twenty two inches (22”) (Objective). Designs shall contain hard drives with no moving parts in any component part. Server SSDs selected shall meet VMWare VSAN AF-6 requirements or better according to the vSAN Hardware Quick Reference Guide. Server shall have all non-boot drives be removable without opening the server. Server shall have a minimum six (6) external SSDs (two (2) Caching, four (4) Capacity) (Threshold) / eight (8) external SSDs (two (2) Caching, six (6) Capacity) (Objective). Server shall have two (2) boot drives for VMWare ESXi separate from VMWare VSAN storage that meet VMware's requirements for persistent storage by default. Server shall contain a minimum of "N" non-remote management ports for connectivity at ten gigabit (10Gb) or better throughput, where N=4 (Threshold) / N=8 on separate network cards (Objective). Server shall contain a minimum of "N" out-of-band management IEC 60603-7 8P8C (RJ45) ports, where N=1 (Threshold) / N=2 (Objective). Server CPU shall operate at a minimum base frequency of 2.0 GHz. Server shall contain Nvidia GPUs that are Nvidia T4 with 16GB VRAM or better (Threshold) with vGPU compute capability (Objective). Server shall contain 256GB of Random Access Memory (Threshold) in no more than half the number of DIMM slots (Objective). Server shall support TPM v2.0. Server components (CPU, GPU, Disk Array Controller, Network Controller, etc.,) shall be on the VMware ESXi 6.7 and VMWare vSAN 6.7 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). Switch shall have ports dedicated for Inter Kit cabling that supports 2N redundant connections between 6 Node Switches at a minimum of 40Gb/s with a maximum hop count of two (2) (Threshold) / made up of a single Cable type (Objective). Switch shall have a minimum "N" IEC 60603-7 8P8C (RJ45) 1/10G Base-T ports and a minimum of "M" 10/25/40/100GbE ports where N=4 and M=11 (Threshold) / N=10 and M>=12 and M is even (Objective). Switch shall have a minimum of two (2) IEC 60603-7 8P8C (RJ45) Ethernet ports able to auto-negotiate 1GbE or 10GbE connection speed (Threshold) / minimum of two (2) Fiber (SFP+) and two (2) RJ45 Ethernet able to auto-negotiate 1GbE or 10GbE connection speed (2 SFP+ and 2 RJ45) (Objective). Switch shall be a minimum 10GbE Network Switch to support networking required of VSAN All Flash configurations as defined in VMWare vSAN Design and Sizing Guide 6.7. Server shall have a maximum width of eight and a half inches (8.5”) . Switch shall have a maximum width of eight and a half inches (8.5”) . Submissions shall be a kit design that can be scaled from Small to Large deployments. Submission devices shall employ a minimum power supply redundancy of N+1, where N is the number of power supplies required to operate). Deployment storage system shall allow for up to "N" storage drives to fail, where N=2. A Deployment shall contain "N" hot-spare servers, where N=2. Submission devices shall operate when exposed to temperatures from 0 degrees C (+32 degrees F) to + 40 degrees C (+104 degrees F) (Threshold) and -32 degrees C (-25 degrees F) to +49 degrees C (+120 degrees F). (Objective) Submission devices shall operate when exposed to RH up to 88% at +31 degrees C (+88 degrees F), non-condensing. Submission devices shall operate when deployed at altitudes from 413 m (1,355 ft.) Below Mean Sea Level to 4572 m (15,000 ft.) Above Mean Sea Level. Submission devices in storage shall withstand exposure to external temperatures from -33 degrees C (-28 degrees F) to +71 degrees C (+160 degrees F). Components shall have a minimum MTBF as listed in the Threshold column of the table below: Table. Component Predicted Reliability Values Component Threshold MTBF Objective MTBF Server 104,635 hours 261,587 hours Switch 119,902 hours 299,755 hours RESPONSE SUBMITTAL INSTRUCTIONS: The responses received from this Request for Information is for information purposes only and does not mandate or impose requirements. This notice is not a request for proposal and the Government does not intend to pay for information submitted. No contract award will be made on the basis of responses received; however, the information will be considered in the Government's acquisition planning. It is desirable that data be received with unlimited rights to the Government. However, the Government recognizes that proprietary data may be included with the information provided. If so, clearly mark such proprietary information and clearly separate it from the unrestricted information as an addendum. Please limit White Paper submissions to a maximum of 15 pages (including a cover sheet) and provide the following information: 1. Please provide the following Point of Contact information: Contact and company information Name Title Company name Date of incorporation Number of years in business Number of employees Location Mailing address Phone number Website address Email address Note that RFI respondents shall designate a single point of contact for receipt of all information pursuant to this RFI 2. Please identify your company's business size standard based on the primary North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code of 334511. For more information, refer to http://www.sba.gov/content/tablesmall-business-size-standards: Other than Small Business (OTSB) Concern Small Business (SB) Concern 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) Woman-Owned Small Business Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) Veteran-Owned Small Business Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business 3. Brief overview of company history, limited to three (3) paragraphs. 4. A technical approach narrative describing the methods in which the contractor will meet or exceed the program objectives and requests described above. 5. If you identify your company as a Small Business as identified above, then is your company interested in a prime contract? If so, continue to questions #6-9, all others skip to Question #10. 6. Under the current SB recertification regulations, do you anticipate your company remaining a small business, under primary stated NAICS code 541330? 7. If you are a small business and plan to be a prime contractor on this effort please inform how you will meet the limitations on subcontracting Clause 52.219-14. Please provide details of which aspects of this effort your company is capable of providing, e.g., warehouse support, inventory management, transportation. Please provide a percentage of the work listed in 7a that is within your Company’s capabilities. 8. If you are a small business, can you go without a payment for 90 days? 9. Offerors are encouraged to identify teams, indicating each team member's size based upon the NAICS code of the work that the team member may be doing. Please provide details regarding proposed joint ventures, teaming arrangements, strategic alliances, or other business arrangements to satisfy these requirements. 10. Has your Company performed this type of effort or similar type effort (to include size and complexity) in the past, if so provide Contract Number , including a customer/company name/ Point of Contact (POC), e-mail address, phone number, and a brief description of your direct support of the effort? (please provide the above information for up to 5 efforts) 11. Please describe your company’s experience with Foreign Military Sales. 12. Please describe your company’s experience with OCONUS operations. 13. Please describe your company’s experience with integrating sensor payloads on tower platforms. 14. Please describe your company’s ability to update Technical Data Packages? 15. What industry standards, certifications, and/or accreditations does your company have for quality control and management (i.e. CMMI, ISO 9001, ISO 17025, NADCAP, etc.)? 16. What approach does your organization use to manage subcontractors, risk, schedule, and cost? 17. Describe your company’s ability and experience to coordinate and execute intra-theater movement of personnel and equipment. 18. Describe your company’s process and experience to conduct field level repairs on OCONUS deployed systems, payloads and associated support equipment. Respondents shall not be obligated to provide the services described herein and it is understood by the United States Government that the cost estimates provided as a result of this request are “best” estimates only. The Government requests that interested sources submit an electronic response of not more than fifteen (15) pages, 8.5" x 11" paper, 12-point, Times New Roman font, with a minimum of one (1) inch margins all around. Responses to Small Business Questions 6 thru 9 are in addition to the above stated fifteen (15) page limitation. Responses should include the company name, Commercial and Government Entity Code (CAGE) code, point of contact, and address. Supporting documentation (such as marketing brochures, fliers, published presentations or papers and other materials that summarize the technology and more about your company) is acceptable (up to two (2) pages worth), and may be referenced by reviewers only in support of claims identified in the White Paper, and only where specifically referenced in the White Paper. The Government makes no guarantee that the supporting documentation will be reviewed and/or considered. Any company proprietary information, performance capabilities and/or future modification plans should be clearly identified and MUST be marked accordingly and will be protected by the Government. Responses to the RFI will not be returned. Responses to the RFI may be used to develop Government documentation. All information marked as proprietary information will be safeguarded to prevent disclosures to non-Government personnel and entities. Your interest in this response is appreciated. All interested companies or organizations are encouraged to respond to the RFI by providing the information by 1400 EST on 01 February 2021. Files should be sent in a Microsoft Word compatible file or a PDF file. Files greater than 10MB cannot be transmitted through the network firewall. Disclaimer: THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT INTEND TO AWARD A CONTRACT ON THE BASIS OF THIS RFI NOR REIMBURSE ANY COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PREPARATION OF RESPONSES. This announcement is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a solicitation. Proprietary information and trade secrets, if any, must be clearly marked on all materials. All information received that is marked Proprietary will be handled accordingly. Responses will not be returned nor will the Government confirm receipt. Whatever information is provided will be used to assess tradeoffs and alternatives available for determining how to proceed in the acquisition process. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. All Government and Contractor personnel reviewing responses will have signed non-disclosure agreements and understand their responsibility for proper use and protection from unauthorized disclosure of proprietary information as described in 41 USC §2101-2107. The Government shall not be liable for or suffer any consequential damages for any proprietary information not properly identified. Proprietary information will be safeguarded in accordance with the applicable Government regulations.