DB10--Large Database NextGen Project (VA-26-00012249)

Active

Contract Opportunity

Sources Sought Notice

Sources Sought Notice

Page 8 of 8
Sources Sought Notice
Page 1 of 8
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
September 22, 2025

1. INTRODUCTION

This Request for Information (RFI) is issued for conducting market research and planning purposes only. Accordingly, this RFI constitutes neither a Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Proposal (RFP), nor a guarantee that one will be issued by the Government in the future; furthermore, it does not commit the Government to contract for any services described herein. Additionally, this RFI does not restrict the Government as to the ultimate acquisition approach. In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking industry information about solutions to replace and modernize our current Oracle SuperCluster M8 estate. The replacement platform must meet or exceed the benchmark and baseline performance and capacity specifications identified in this RFI and deliver improvements in resiliency, operability, scalability, and compliance. This RFI is for market research purposes only. Responses will inform future acquisition planning and strategy. No contract will be awarded based on this RFI.

The Government is not responsible for any cost incurred by industry in furnishing this information. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested vendor's expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future solicitation if any is issued. Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary. All submissions will become Government property and will not be returned. Interested vendors are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response. VA is under no obligation to provide feedback to the company, or to contact the company for clarification of any information submitted in response to this RFI.

2. RFI Response Instructions

Provide the following information:

(A) Provide Company Information:

1) Company Name.

2) Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE)/Unique Entity ID (previously Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS)) under which the company is registered in System for Award Management (SAM)/ Small Business (SB) Administration, SB Search.

3) Company Business Size and Status for North American Industry Classification (NAICS) ________.

4) Contract Vehicles: Identify if you can provide services via a Government-wide Acquisition Contract, Federal Supply Schedule, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) VI, etc., that may assist in determining acquisition strategy.

5) Socioeconomic Data: Identify business size. If a small business, please identify socio-economic category(ies).

6) Company Address.

7) Point of Contact Name.

8) Pont of Contact Telephone Number.

9) Point of Contact Email Address.

(B) Brief summary (not to exceed 20 pages), describing your company s technical approach to meeting the requirements, by responding to the below:

1. Benchmark & Baseline Performance: The proposed solution must provide equal or superior performance and capacity for the Benchmark Summary and Benchmark Performance Tables. Vendors shall provide evidence, benchmarks, and technical documentation to demonstrate compliance.

2. Current-State Summary: VA currently operates Oracle SuperCluster M8s with the following capacities

Â
Development
Pre-production
Production
Disaster Recovery
Physical M8 Servers
2
2
2
2
Processors
16
16
12
12
Cores
512
512
384
384
Memory Terabyte (TB)
16
16
12
12
Networks
16 x 1 Gigabyte per second (Gb/s) Ethernet (admin)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (client)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (backup)
32 Quad Data Rate (QDR) (40Gb/s) InfiniBand (internal)
16 x 1Gb/s Ethernet (admin)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (client)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (backup)
32 QDR (40Gb/s) InfiniBand (internal)
12 x 1Gb/s Ethernet (admin)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (client)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (backup)
32 QDR (40Gb/s) InfiniBand (internal)
12 x 1Gb/s Ethernet (admin)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (client)
32 x 10Gb/s Ethernet (backup)
32 QDR (40Gb/s) InfiniBand (internal)
Storage (Database)
70TB usable file

13 Exadata Storage Servers
1500TB raw Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
500TB usable (ASM)
70TB usable file

10 Exadata Storage Servers
1950TB raw (ASM)
650TB usable (ASM)
70TB usable file

25 Exadata Storage Servers
3750TB raw
1250TB usable
70TB usable file

25 Exadata Storage Servers
3750TB raw
1250TB usable

Storage (File)
Â
Â
ZS7-2 Zettabyte File System (ZFS) Storage Appliance
2 storage heads
6 200GB write flash SSD
4 7.6TB read flash SSD
20 7.6TB SSD disks (90TB usable)
40 18TB disks (288TB usable)
ZS7-2 ZFS Storage Appliance
2 storage heads
6 200GB write flash SSD
4 7.6TB read flash SSD
20 7.6TB SSD disks (90TB usable)
40 18TB disks (288TB usable)
Oracle Database versions

Oracle 19c in use
Exadata Storage Software 25.1
Oracle 23ai upgrade is planned

Oracle Database features in use

Real Application Clusters (RAC)
Partitioning
In-Memory
Active Data Guard
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
Advanced Compression

Applications

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)
Oracle Weblogic
Informatica

Workload profiles

Secure multi-tenant
Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)
Business Intelligence (BI) analytics
High concurrency and data throughput
Isolated tenants, no noisy neighbor effects
20% annual data growth
Cyclical and predictable maintenance windows defined
Integrated and tested bundled updates for all operating systems, Oracle Database, storage, networks and infrastructure components
Integration dependencies: backup systems, monitoring, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), configuration management

Migration considerations:

Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC)/Solaris dependencies and required tools for data migration, such as
Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN)
Database export/import (Data Pump)
GoldenGate
Oracle stores SPARC data in big-endian format for compatibility with other Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC)-based systems. A conversion to little-endian may be required when migrating to a new platform
Oracle 23ai will require a migration to container databases (CDB)
Migration to 23ai is not a specific requirement for the initial deployment

3. Desired Outcomes

Reduced failover and brownout times
Simplified operations and management
Lower 5-year total cost of ownership (TCO)
Higher compute and storage density per data center rack
2.5x increase in single threaded Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance
5x increase in database Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) (8k)
20x increase in flash data throughput
2x increase in backup throughput
Leverage higher speed networks to reduce the number of switch ports and cables, simplifying network management
Columnar compression to reduce the data footprint of large data warehouses
Elastic scalability
Small entry level configurations
Simple growth in storage and compute with minimal disruptions
Modernization path to improve compatibility with cloud solutions
Ability to introduce new database features when they are first available
Built-in security and compliance features
Minimize tenant downtime during migration to the new platform

4. Requirements

4.1 Functional Requirements

High performance platform for running Oracle databases
Support for Oracle Database Long Term Releases (LTR) 19c and 23ai
Support future Oracle Database innovation releases
Support for the following Oracle Database features
RAC
Active Data Guard
TDE
Advanced Compression
Must be able to support databases as large as 1Petabyte (PB)
Must be able to support RAC database clusters as large as 120 cores and 4TB of memory
High performance platform to support mission critical applications
High throughput, low latency network between hosted applications and databases
The ability to limit the number of Oracle core licenses required for a specific feature, tenant, environment or server
Describe any capacity on demand features in your solution
Provide secure multi-tenant deployment at the virtual server, physical server and database levels
Integration with the following monitoring, management and automation tools
Ansible
BigFix
Centrify
Commvault
CyberArk
Dynatrace
Elastic
Oracle Enterprise Manager
Puppet
ScienceLogic
ServiceNow
SolarWinds
Splunk
4.2 Operational Requirements
Zero downtime rolling patching for servers, storage and infrastructure components
Power supplies must be redundant and hot swapable
Storage devices must be redundant and hot swapable
Automated self-healing
File storage must support continuous and scheduled periodic replication
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) approved encryption enabled by default
Integrated provisioning tools for creating and deploying RAC clusters
Installation and configuration of guest operating system
Configuration of dedicated bare metal operating system
Configure network and database storage (ASM)
Install and configure Oracle grid infrastructure
Install and configure Oracle database
Ability to create automated service requests
Live database server patching for remediating critical kernel vulnerabilities without requiring a reboot
Describe any management or automation Application Programming Interface (API)s for your solution
Describe any Oracle Enterprise Manager plug-ins for your solution

4.3 Technical Requirements
System availability of 99.99%
Backup rate of 40TB/hr
Database storage must be configured for Oracle High Redundancy (3 way mirror) with automatic data rebalancing after maintenance
Describe your testing procedures for Oracle releases and updates, particularly for large databases.
Dedicated high speed redundant private internal network for each environment to be used for
Database storage access to reduce contention with other network activities
Database cluster interconnect to reduce latency, reduce time to detect cluster node failures, improve cluster data coherence throughput
Each environment should have a dedicated management network
Each physical server should have the following external network interfaces
Dedicated Ethernet for remote administrative access
Dedicated Ethernet for access to service processors and system consoles
Redundant 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet for client access
Ability to add an additional pair of redundant 100Gb/s Ethernet interfaces client access
Redundant 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet for backup
Ability to add an additional pair of redundant 100Gb/s Ethernet interfaces backup
Support for Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) with the ability to use Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addressing
Support for Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs)
Describe how to grow your initial configuration to meet the 5 year growth projection in this document
Describe how you could grow your configuration beyond the 5 year projection

5. Security & Compliance
VA 6500 alignment
NIST SP 800-53 (High)
FIPS 140-3 validated crypto
Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High (if hosted/managed)
Section 508 compliance
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) §889, FAR 52.204-24/25/23 Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) requirements
Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) hardening and current Authorization to Operate (ATO) posture
Describe any documentation or tools you provide for analysis and remediation of STIGs
Describe any Out of the Box (OOTB) STIG hardening in your solution

6. High Availability & Disaster Recovery
Sub-second node failure detection and recovery initiation
Detection of disk stalls and automatic redirection of Input/Output (I/O) to healthy devices
Rolling maintenance with minimal service impact
Storage protection and automated rebuild/rebalance
Split-brain prevention
Cross-site disaster recovery (DR)
2 hour Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
12 hour Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Chaos/failure-injection testing results

7. Migration Approach
Zero or near-zero downtime strategies
Data transfer and cutover plan
Rollback capabilities
Pilot and validation options

8. Support Model
24-hour x 7 days per week support (24/7)
Describe your spare parts logistics and maintenance capability
Describe your firmware and software patch cadence
Describe your support escalation paths
Onsite and remote support options
Training and knowledge transfer
No access to systems permitted outside of the United States

9. Capacity & Scalability
Scale-up and scale-out architecture
Minimum and maximum number of cores and memory capacity per physical server
Minimum and maximum physical servers per rack
Minimum and maximum storage capacity per rack
Maximum racks supported per environment
Inter-rack fabric and elastic growth

10. Commercials & TCO
Five-year fixed/variable costs (hardware, software, support, facilities)
Purchase, lease and subscription options
Licensing impact analysis for Oracle database and features
Price protection clauses

11. Vendor Response Format
Responses must include:
Hardware bill of materials
Required software and licensing
Network topology diagrams
Storage tier breakdown
Firmware/OS versions
Benchmark results
Failure testing results
Security compliance matrix
Exceptions list

12. Evaluation Criteria (Weighting)
Performance vs. Exadata benchmarks: 35%
Reliability/ High Availability (HA) results: 20%
Security/compliance: 15%
Migration approach: 10%
Manageability/operations: 10%
Scalability: 5%
TCO: 5%

13. Submission Instructions

Responses must be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word or Portable Document Format (PDF).

Proprietary information must be clearly marked.

Responses to this RFI shall be submitted electronically by November 6, 2025, at 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time via email to Juan C Perez at juan.perez5@va.gov. All proprietary/company confidential material shall be clearly marked on every page that contains such.

Benchmark and Capacity Summary Table:

Environment: Production
Initial Installation
5 Year Projection
Database Servers
4
4
Database Cores
768
768
Memory (TB)
12
12
Cores (SQL Offload)
1024
1600
Management Network
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
Internal Network
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
Client Network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
Backup network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
DB Flash Throughput (GB/s)
4,500
4,500
DB Flash Read IOPS (8Kilobyte (KB)
11,200,000
11,200,000
DB Flash Write IOPS (8KB)
9,000,000
9,000,000
DB Usable Storage TB
1250
2000
File usable storage (TB)
200
250

Environment: Disaster Recovery
Initial Installation
5 Year Projection
Database Servers
4
4
Database Cores
768
768
Memory (TB)
12
12
Cores (SQL Offload)
1024
1600
Management Network
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
Internal Network
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
Client Network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
Backup network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
DB Flash Throughput (GB/s)
4,500
4,500
DB Flash Read IOPS (8KB)
11,200,000
11,200,000
DB Flash Write IOPS (8KB)
9,000,000
9,000,000
DB Usable Storage TB
1250
2000
File usable storage (TB)
200
250

Environment: Pre-production
Initial Installation
5 Year Projection
Database Servers
4
4
Database Cores
768
768
Memory (TB)
12
12
Cores (SQL Offload)
576
640
Management Network
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
Internal Network
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
Client Network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
Backup network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
DB Flash Throughput (GB/s)
4,500
4,500
DB Flash Read IOPS (8KB)
11,200,000
11,200,000
DB Flash Write IOPS (8KB)
9,000,000
9,000,000
DB Usable Storage TB
650
800
File usable storage (TB)
50
75

Environment: Development
Initial Installation
5 Year Projection
Database Servers
4
4
Database Cores
768
768
Memory (TB)
12
12
Cores (SQL Offload)
320
448
Management Network
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 1Gb/s Ethernet
Internal Network
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
2 x 100Gb/s active/active
Client Network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
Backup network
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
2 x 10/25/100 Gb/s Ethernet
DB Flash Throughput (GB/s)
2,500
3,500
DB Flash Read IOPS (8KB)
11,200,000
11,200,000
DB Flash Write IOPS (8KB)
5,000,000
7,000,000
DB Usable Storage TB
400
500
File usable storage (TB)
50
75

Application Servers
Virtual Hosts
Cores
Memory (GB)
Production
9
48
1,500
Disaster Recovery
6
30
1,000
Pre-production
6
21
1,000
Development
10
26
512

Attachments/Links