Cisco Switches - Data Centre Networking Project

The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to select a suitable supplier to provide, install and support new networking switches in the CAF data centre.

CAF is moving from the 1st Floor of the data centre in Sovereign House, London, to the 5th Floor. The move will be a phased migration to reduce risk and minimise disruption to the business, and ultimately the customer. The plan is to connect the existing equipment up to new equipment and migrate services. As part of the data centre move, we will take the opportunity to improve our current network design and implementation.

What we currently have:
-4 Racks, populated with servers, network switches, hardware load balancers, tape drives etc.
- 75% of servers are virtual machines on VMware. There are a small number of physical servers.
- We currently have 3 x Cisco 3750 48 port switches in a Stack Wise configuration. All copper 1 Gb. This is the core switch and is densely populated.
- We have 2 x 24 port HP 2530 Switches providing an External DMZ connected by a trunk - copper 1 Gb and 2 x 24 port HP 2810 Switches in an Internal DMZ connected by a trunk - copper 1 Gb.
- We also have 2 x Cisco WS-C3560CG-8TC-S which are out of scope.

What we’d like:
- We have enough spare space to reduce the rack footprint down to 3 racks. 1 rack will be populated with a SAN, fibre channel switches, hardware load balancers etc. This will be referred to as Rack 1. The other 2 racks will be populated with servers and will be referred to as Rack 2 and Rack 3.
- We’d like to have a “core switch” in Rack 1 and Top of Rack (TOR) in Racks 2 and 3.
- We require two stacked switches in each rack for redundancy. Most servers are currently teamed across the current switches. StackWise or VSS (where possible) should be used.
- We’d like to mount the core switches at the front of the rack and the TOR at the rear of the racks.
- We want to trunk the TOR switches to the Core using redundant cabling in a 40Gb Trunk. (2 x 10 Gb for each switch)
- We want to use the new solution to incorporate hosting the DMZ on the Cisco switches, as opposed to having separate HP switches for internal and external DMZ.
- Looking at the market, we think the Cisco 9300 will be suitable for our requirements. However, there is some debate on whether a core switch such as 4500-X or 9500 would be more suitable, due to the nature of trunking the TOR switches to the Core. Regardless, the Cisco 9300 is required as the TOR solution. We are open to discussion on the core.
- Cisco SMARTnet is required 24 x 7 x 4
- SFP’s are required to be purchased, installed and configured for the existing Cisco 3750 stack and the 4 HP switches.
- The servers will not be connecting to the switches using fibre, it is anticipated that in the future we may be utilising fibre, hence we are installing switches that can support fibre.
- The focus of this project is to install switches that are supportable, have a long lifespan and to implement a fibre backbone.

***This RFP requires the attached NDA to be completed and sent back to cperry@cafonline.org. Please note your response will only be valid and evaluated on the basis that this NDA is signed and returned by the 19th April 2018***