Unisys SYSVOL Resiliency

This is a notice of IRS's intent to award a delivery order containing a Brand Name description under an existing contract. 1 Background The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) operates Enterprise Computing Centers in Martinsburg, VA (ECC-MTB), and in Memphis, TN (ECC-MEM). In each Center, Unisys Dorado 780 mainframe processors run a tax processing application called the Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS). Recently the IRS migrated all IDRS production traffic to a new configuration that is based on IBM's WebSphere MQ and which serves as an interface between the IBM and Unisys mainframes. To address performance issues, Unisys elected to offload a portion of MQ message processing on to a new device integrated into the mainframe, called a QProcessor. The QProcessor is now functioning in the critical path of IDRS traffic. Because of its critical role, the IRS installed backup QProcessor appliances for all of the production and DR partitions. This provides a measure of resiliency; however the current process for recovery is manual, requiring intervention by Database Administrators or by computer operators. The objective of this acquisition is to implement full resiliency on the Unisys QProcessor appliances that operate on the IRS Production and DR partitions in the Memphis and Martinsburg Computing Centers. In addition to reducing the time to recover from an outage, the proposed technology will also store all active messages and attempt to recover all open sessions after failing over to the backup QProcessor. This will require additional hardware and contract services. It is anticipated that the following brand name items will be purchased: - EMC VNX 5300 disk array components 2. Brand Name Justification The use of a Brand name description is essential to the Government's requirements, thereby precluding consideration of a product manufactured by another company. Reference the attached u14 JOFOC (Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition) document. All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.