RAMP DCIM Data Center Infrastructure Management Software RFP TEMPLATE 1-866-612-3637 SALES@TUANGRU.COM TUANGRU.COM
DCIM RFP TEMPLATE Dear Sir or Madam, Your company has been invited to submit your company s qualifications to participate in the bidding process for a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution for [company]. The goal of this project will be to provide a DCIM tool for use within critical spaces. The required deliverables for the project are outlined in the pages following this cover letter. The scope of the project as well as the schedule of the RFP can be found enclosed. We suggest closely reviewing the entire RFP. As part of your submission, please include a high level schedule for each phase of the project. This schedule is to be based on your experience with similar projects. Additionally, include expected high level budgets based on project description. Both schedules and budgets will be used for reference, but final time line and costs will be negotiated once a firm is selected. We wish you the best in preparing and submitting your qualifications. Please feel free to contact me at [phone number] or [email address] if I can provide any clarifications. Sincerely, [name] 1
CONTENTS 1. Response Instruction... 3 2. Supplemental Materials... 3 3. Inspections... 3 4. Schedule... 3 5. Pricing... 3 6. Description of Data Center(s)... 4 7. Scope of Services... 4 7.1. System Overview... 4 7.2. Floor Plan Layout... 4 7.3. Rack Elevation View... 5 7.4. Inventory... 5 7.5. Workflow Processes... 5 7.6. Power Monitoring... 5 7.7. Cooling and Environmental Monitoring... 6 7.8. Alarm Notifications... 6 7.9. Equipment Location Planning... 6 7.10. Equipment Location Planning... 6 7.11. IT Device Management... 7 7.12. Infrastructure Device Management... 7 7.13. Reporting... 7 7.14. Virtualization Integration... 8 7.15. Security... 8 7.16. API... 8 2
1. Response Instruction Each vendor s response must be no more than [#] pages. Time on site can be scheduled if a site visit is required to gather information necessary to provide a cost. 2. Supplemental Materials Vendors are responsible for including all pertinent services in the qualification package. Data sheets, typical warranties, specification information, completed forms requested as part of the submission, and any other information which may affect the evaluation and contract award should be included. Materials such as legal documents and contractual agreements which the vendor wishes to include as a condition of the bid must also be in the returned bid package. Failure to include all necessary and proper supplemental materials may be cause to reject the entire bid. As these documents are not part of the proposal, they are not subject to the [#] page limit. 3. Inspections [Company] reserves the right to interview any references and/or make arrangements to visit any vendor s referenced site to verify vendor s qualifications to meet the demands of this project. If a vendor cannot furnish references or make arrangements for a site visit, or fails to satisfactorily show an ability to perform, the vendor s bid can be rejected as inadequate. 4. Schedule RFP submission open Deadline for submission of questions, 5 PM EST RFP submission closed, 5 PM EST Interview shortlist firms Announce selected firm Project start Project completion 5. Pricing All costs shall be provided in a table showing itemized costs and a total cost. [Company] may choose to purchase one or more separate modules if the DCIM solution contains multiple modules. All recurring maintenance and licensing cost information shall be provided in a separate table. These costs should be listed on a yearly basis. Include pricing to show cost to increase capacity to support additional equipment. 3
6. Description of Data Center(s) [A description of the data center(s) should be given including, but not limited to, location, square footage, facility equipment and capacities, IT equipment count, virtualization percent, number of racks, current monitoring systems in place, and anticipated growth. List any other systems with which the DCIM solution should integrate, including BMS, CMDB, trouble ticketing, change management, and external databases.] 7. Scope of Services 7.1. System Overview 7.1.1. The DCIM shall be a web-based system that is accessed through a standard webbrowsing tool such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Firefox. 7.1.2. The DCIM should be able to run on a physical or virtualized server. 7.1.3. The DCIM must be able to maintain inventory and asset management within the data center and provide visualization of the assets in floor layout, rack elevation, and individual asset views. 7.1.4. The DCIM must be able to monitor virtual machines and physical servers, including blade servers and blade chassis. 7.1.5. The DCIM must be able to monitor network equipment, including switches and routers. 7.1.6. The DCIM must be able to monitor power at the device, rack PDU, rack, and facility levels. 7.1.7. The DCIM must be able to monitor cooling equipment in the data center. 7.1.8. The DCIM must be able to monitor environmental conditions in the data center. 7.1.9. The DCIM must support auto-discovery of detailed asset information for both IT and Facility equipment. 7.1.10. The DCIM must keep a log of all changes within the data center. Where possible, this change management should be automated. 7.1.11. The DCIM must be able to manage tasks and workflows (linked set of tasks). 7.1.12. The DCIM must be able to create reports in PDF, Microsoft Word, or Excel spreadsheet formats. The DCIM should provide the ability to create custom reports without requiring an external report creation tool. All reports, including custom reports, should be able to be automatically created and distributed via email. 7.1.13. The DCIM should display energy efficiency information such as PUE, DCiE, and CADE for a location, as well as showing capacity information for space, power, network, and cooling. 7.2. Floor Plan Layout The DCIM tool shall display inventory data within the data center physical layout. Location-based drill-down views shall provide a structured overview of data center locations from a global to local view down to single assets. The DCIM tool shall support a multi-layer overhead graphical floor layout which allow the user to view the equipment in the room by status, temperature, power, and other attributes. The DCIM shall have the ability to add locations and rooms of different types to the data center model to represent the physical enterprise infrastructure. The DCIM shall provide the ability to modify location layouts from within the DCIM tool. 4
7.3. Rack Elevation View The DCIM tool shall visually represent the physical layout of IT equipment in a rack. Both front and rear views of the rack shall be supported. The rack view shall show IT equipment as well as rack PDUs, power connections, communication connections, shelves, blanking panels, and available space. Multiple layers should be supported to show temperature, status, and power of the equipment within the rack. Zero U equipment shall be supported. The rack elevation view shall support dragging and dropping of equipment within the rack, as well as the ability to drag new equipment into the rack. Power and network connections should support drag and drop to easily set power and communication connections. The rack elevation view shall also show the power and environmental conditions at the rack. This data should be displayed in a graphical view for the past day, week, or month. 7.4. Inventory The DCIM tool shall provide a model database that contains both floor and rack mounted data center equipment with detailed information such as weight, dimensions, typical power usage, images, and other device-specific information (such as number and type of outlets for rack PDUs). The DCIM shall support dynamic searching by name, IP address, manufacturer, model, location, serial number, device type, or any other applicable fields, including user-defined fields. The DCIM should support searching by condition, such as rack PDUs with more than a certain percent load, or servers running a selected operating system, and so on. Users should be able to select the fields they want to view, the order of the fields, and any other selection criteria. The DCIM should be able to create a custom report for any search and be able to save the report for later use and to schedule the report for automatic distribution. 7.5. Workflow Processes The DCIM tool shall provide the ability to create processes to organize moves, adds, and changes through an automated work flow system. All tasks and workflows shall provide an audit trail of all activity. Users should be able to create their own custom processes. 7.6. Power Monitoring The DCIM tool shall display and report measured power load data for all infrastructure equipment, including, but not limited to, transfer switches, generators, circuit breakers, UPSs, PDUs, and rack PDUs. The DCIM will detect configuration issues regarding data center power configuration and provide recommended actions. The DCIM will perform failover calculations on an ongoing basis to determine the impact of equipment in the power chain becoming unavailable. For example, the DCIM tool will evaluate the impact of a rack PDU becoming unavailable and the impact to other rack PDUs due to equipment failing over. The DCIM will warn of conditions where IT equipment will no longer have sufficient power resources. The DCIM tool shall display the power chain for the data center, highlighting single points of failure and current power usage and capacity for each power device. 5
7.7. Cooling and Environmental Monitoring The DCIM tool shall display and report measured cooling load data for all infrastructure equipment, including, but no limited to, CRACs, coolers, chillers, pumps, and fans. The DCIM shall be able to determine the capacity and impact of failed cooling systems. The DCIM tool shall be able to provide inlet and exhaust temperatures at the rack by monitoring server inlet temperatures, rack PDU sensors, wireless sensors, environmental monitoring equipment, and any other available sensors in the rack. The temperature data shall be displayed visually in the floor layout. The DCIM will be able to use agentless data gathering methods to poll temperature sensors from IT equipment, including non-intel devices. 7.8. Alarm Notifications The DCIM tool shall be capable of triggering alerts based on criticality (critical, warning, information, unreachable). The state of all current alarms shall be available in a dashboard in the DCIM tool. The user shall have the ability to select a device in an alarm state and display the specific nature of the alarm. The DCIM shall contain an alert history for all devices and alerts, which shall be sortable by date range, location, and severity of alert. The user shall have the ability to configure notification, including the severity of the alarm, the format of the information sent in the alert, the method of transmitting the alert, and the alert recipients. The DCIM tool shall be capable of sending alerts based on manual or automatically detected changes in the data center. Automatically detected changes include, but are not limited to, network cabling changes, software installed or removed from servers, firmware changes to infrastructure equipment, operating system changes to servers, and hardware changes to IT or infrastructure equipment. The DCIM tool shall be capable of sending alerts and change messages to a valid email account or to a mobile device and send SNMP traps to a network management system. Administrators shall also be configure the DCIM to use a command procedure or executable file to transmit alarms in other formats such as SMS messaging, sending messages to BMC Remedy or LANDESK, and so on. 7.9. Equipment Location Planning The DCIM tool shall be capable of specifying potential locations for rack-based IT equipment based on the availability and requirements of physical infrastructure capacity such as space, cooling, network, and power capacity as well as other user defined requirements. The DCIM tool shall be capable of reserving space for new equipment and predicting the impact of the added equipment on power throughout the power chain. 7.10. Equipment Location Planning The DCIM tool shall model the configured network connections and allow a user to manually configure physical network routes between devices. The DCIM tool shall be capable of determining the end to end network connection between devices and network equipment and shall be capable of detecting changes to the end to end connection. The DCIM tool shall display a network map for the data center. 6
7.11. IT Device Management The DCIM tool shall display and report measured power load data for all IT equipment where available. The DCIM will utilize agentless monitoring to gather data for IT equipment, including non-intel devices. If power data is not supplied by the IT equipment, the DCIM tool shall calculate the power based on known power information such as rack PDU outlet or total power data and typical power usage for the IT equipment. The DCIM tool will collect other sensor values from IT equipment, including, but not limited to, temperature, CPU usage, memory usage, and disk drive usage. The DCIM tool will collect asset information from IT equipment, including, but not limited to, manufacturer, model, serial number, hardware configuration, IP addresses, MAC address, installed software, firmware version, operating system, and network connections. The user interface shall allow for discovery of devices and sensors. The user shall have the ability to schedule discovery of devices with any combination of configurable settings via IP or IP range, type of device, credentials (SNMP community string or IPMI username/password, for example), time of day, and day of week or month. The DCIM shall allow newly discovered devices to be placed into a specific group or into an unassigned group. The DCIM shall automatically log discovered changes (such as hardware or software changes) for previously discovered devices and update the information for the device. 7.12. Infrastructure Device Management The DCIM tool will collect sensor values from infrastructure equipment, including, but not limited to, temperature, power, load, and status. The DCIM tool will collect asset information from infrastructure equipment, including, but not limited to, manufacturer, model, serial number, hardware configuration, IP addresses, MAC address, firmware version, capacity information, and network connections. The DCIM tool shall support SNMP (v1 and v3), BACnet, and Modbus TCP protocols. The DCIM tool shall be able to communicate device data and events from existing SiteScan monitoring systems. 7.13. Reporting All data collected over time must be stored for extracting and trending. The data collection poll cycle shall be configurable by the user, with a default of 5 minutes. Standard reports should be provided for individual devices, device type, and location. Standard report formats should include PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel. The user shall also have the ability to create custom reports through the DCIM tool. The custom reports shall be capable of being saved and modified as needed. All reports, including custom reports, shall be capable of being automatically run and delivered via email to a group of recipients on a scheduled basis. The user shall have the ability to create reports that display graphs for multiple data points. The user shall be able to select up to 8 sensor points to be graphed and have the ability to display any combination of minimum, maximum, and average data for the selected time period. The user shall have the ability to export the data points to an Excel spreadsheet. 7
7.14. Virtualization Integration The DCIM software shall support integration with VMware vcenter to provide virtualization layer information. The same level of information provided at the physical server level shall be provided for virtual machines, including, but not limited to sensor values such as CPU, memory, and disk drive usage as well as asset information such as manufacturer, model, serial number, hardware resources used, IP addresses, installed software, and operating system. The DCIM tool shall provide insight into how virtual machines relate to physical servers and their location. It shall display virtual machine application names for each physical server. Users should be able to search for a virtual machine and locate its physical server. 7.15. Security The communication between the DCIM software and the web client shall be secured via a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 168 bit Triple-DES (Data Encryption Standard) encoded connection. The DCIM shall synchronize to LDAP and Active Directory. The login to the web interface shall use SSL authentication. The web launch to devices shall occur through an HTTP or HTTPS connection. The HTTP or HTTPS port shall be user configurable. The DCIM shall have no limit to the number of user accounts or groups that can be created. 7.16. API The DCIM software should provide a web services REST API to allow other applications to access data from the DCIM. 8