Sealed proposals endorsed Immutable On-Premise Backup Storage Server for the City of Dickinson will be received per document instructions by the Information Technology Department at City Hall 38 1st ST West, Dickinson, ND 58601, until 12:00 Noon, Wednesday, August 20, 2025.
Instructions for submitting proposals and/or receiving the complete RFP document specifications may be obtained during regular office hours at the same location, or by contacting Aaron Meyer via email IT [at] dickinsongov.com (IT[at]dickinsongov[dot]com) (Email is preferred) or phone 701-456-7805. The City reserves the right to reject any or all proposals. Bid approval will be considered at the September 2, 2025 meeting and the bid award notification will be provided to the corresponding party within 5 business days of that meeting.
Questions Received:
What do we mean by: Guaranteed 100% data availability
As we support a dispatch center, we strive for 100% uptime. What this means when we purchase hardware/software. We look for vendors and hardware that aim for your data to be accessible 100% of the time 24/7 without downtime or delays. Typically this means that the hardware we purchase has redundant systems involved such as multiple processing nodes, redundant PSU, and redundant NICs. It also means that vendors must stand behind their work with robust SLAs that formally aim for 100% uptime. Although we understand that there is a possibility of downtime we strive for the industry standard of 99.9999% uptime.
Does the City of Dickinson require a 4HR (Same Day) SLA for the Delivery of replacement parts for the storage unit?
We normally look for 12-24 Hour Max due to our location
How does 70TB of live data need 400TB of Veeam repository storage? Any calculations used that you can share? i.e. the Veeam calculator tool?
- Multiple uncompressible copies of the backup data stored in a GFS approach
- The sizing is based on what we see on our current storage systems as well as where we plan to grow – the 400TB sizing is based on internal calculations that we have utilized to plan growth over the past decade
What is the mix of VM’s, database and unstructured data being protected?
- VMs – 90%
- Database – 2%
- Unstructured – 8%
Is any Veeam Ready Object solution acceptable?
- The Solution must be a native immutable storage appliance that works is fully compatible with Veeam Backup and Replication Essentials
What is your definition of purpose-built?
- Built/Designed/Engineered solely for the purpose of Immutable/Backup Storage – we are not looking for general purpose servers that utilize linux hardening to achieve immutability.
Are you looking for just a S3 repository or planning to make this part of a SOBR (performance, capacity and archive tiers)?
- This will be a S3 repository and not a part of SOBR
- Snapshots are not generally a feature for Object storage systems.
Does object lock make a suitable replacement for snapshots?
- Immutable Veeam Snapshots of data – Object Lock should be fine as long as the data cannot be deleted in any way shape or form prior to the expiration of the immutable period.
No requirement for a DR repository?
- None at this time – we will handle that either in the future or in-house
Should support instant recovery, high-speed restores, and rapid ingestion rates optimized for synthetic full backups
- Any specific bandwidth requirement?
- We are looking to use 25GB SFP Modules as per the specifications in the Bid requirements as that is what we currently use for our SAN
- Or instant recovery timeframes?
- Within 30 Seconds to 3 Minutes for a VM to Boot to usable with recovery ongoing in the background back to the original repository
Does the City have a preferred vendor for the underlying storage hardware?
- Preferably one that uses immutable flash storage, but we haven’t named a preferred vendor.
For recovery or disaster operations, what are the City's recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO)?
- RTO – Critical Systems – we want to boot the image with 30 seconds to 3 minutes and be fully restored within 3-7 Days
- RPO – 24 Hours
Does the City have any existing license agreements with Microsoft or other operating system providers that should be considered?
- No
Does the City's 400TB requirement refer to raw capacity, usable capacity after RAID, or effective capacity after data reduction?
- Usable capacity after RAID – not effective capacity
Could the City please define what it considers to be "airgap-like protections"?
- Protections that emulate the isolation of data to work similarly to a physical air-gapped solution using software/logical processes
To ensure compatibility with the City's preferences, can you confirm whether a proposed solution is permitted to utilize subscription-based licensing models for software, rather than requiring perpetual licenses?
- We want to get a 5 Year agreement with the original purchase and expect there to be a renewed yearly cost after that period for software assurance and hardware replacement/coverage
Does the City leverage Kubernetes or containerization technologies outside of virtualization, or will the implementation be bare metal?
- We do not leverage Kubernetes at this time
Are there any specific formatting or structural requirements for the response that we should be aware of?
- None at this time
Is there a minimum throughput requirement?
- 25Gbps connection modules – we are hoping to move approximately minimum 5GB/sec
Is there a minimum IOPS requirement?
- Not at this time
Can you confirm if you are looking for 100% data availability, or is the expectation five-nines (99.999%) availability?
- 99.99999% is perfect as we understand there can be downtime due to power etc.
Can you confirm that the Hitachi Vantara E590 SAN serves as your primary storage, and the system being requested is intended as a backup solution?
- System Request is the backup
Can you provide further details on your infrastructure setup and where this storage solution fits into your workflow?
- This will provide a full backup repository with a number of days as immutable
Could you provide additional information on the number of virtual machines (VMs) in this environment? Specifically, how many VMs will need to be backed up using Veeam?
- 35-40 VMs with 2-3 Physical and 1 SQL
Based on the information provided, our understanding is that your production storage is currently running on the Vantara E590 SAN, with 70TB of live data (VM data).
- Correct
This SAN is the backend for your Hyper-V cluster, and you are seeking to procure an immutable storage repository for Veeam to back up this environment. Is that correct?
- Yes
Does the storage capacity need to be scalable? If so, what is the required maximum storage capacity?
- Yes we would prefer scalable to at least 5 PB
Is there a specific product lifecycle requirement for extended maintenance and nondisruptive upgrades? Additionally, is there a maximum maintenance period (e.g., 5 years, 6 years, 7 years) required?
- We are looking for a 5 year agreement on this device with the intention to renew after that point