DIAMONDS Next Generation

The Government intends to restrict competition to specific brand name products (VMware, Cisco, and EMC) of information technology hardware, software, and storage. These brand name products are all offered by multiple authorized resellers, and the solicitation with the specifications list (Request for Quote) will be open to any potential offeror who is an authorized reseller and can provide ALL brands required. A new initiative to modernize the legacy Defense Integration and Management of Nuclear Data Services (DIAMONDS) architecture to be more capable, supportable, secure, and cost effective using newer technologies, as well as comply with DoD mandates. DIAMONDS is a closed, fully integrated environment, so all hardware and software for the testbed are specifically selected because of their ability to seamlessly interoperate. Mixing vendors will provide a sub-optimal operating environment and require more resources than available to the program to integrate, operate, and manage, and will also significantly increase the complexity of the project, resulting in increased ongoing costs. The DIAMONDS Next Generation (DNG) testbed will provide DTRA the opportunity to validate marketing claims against reality within the DIAMONDS operating environment, while simultaneously building the experience and knowledge base to plan, design, and implement the future production environment. A single procurement will be used to provide the most cost effective solution, both in terms of procurement and setup. This will avoid additional coordination among vendors to ensure compatibility of products and also avoid potentially longer delivery and setup schedules and to ensure components aren't delivered on separate schedules. As these products represent new technologies to the DIAMONDS program, it is essential to have a single supplier to work with to resolve any/all problems during setup and configuration, without the risk of multiple vendors placing blame on the others. All products are mainstream, readily available items with many suppliers able to deliver. No item is exclusive to a limited subset of vendors. We identified a number of benefits with using engineered servers. Virtual Computing Environment (VCE), LLC. is a collaborative partnership between VMware (software), Cisco (hardware), and EMC (storage) that provides engineered servers rather than requiring buyers or separate system integrators to integrate hardware and software. We selected the VCE Vblock architecture over competing products because it is fully compatible with the Cisco UCS products (Cisco is one of the key components), and provides single vendor support, which will potentially save the DIAMONDS program significant money, time, and resources. The VCE Vblock servers are all able to be remotely managed using the same software tools as the Cisco UCS servers selected. We plan to evaluate the benefits of the VCE engineered products relative to integrating components in the DIAMONDS program to determine benefits.