Request for Proposal for Disaster Recovery Site

Statement of Work

Purpose

Business continuity is essential for the Anatolia College. Therefore and based on the IT Strategic Plan , Anatolia College needs to maintain a high service quality regardless of circumstances. The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to invite prospective vendors to submit a proposal to supply Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).

General Information

Since its founding in 1886, the name of Anatolia has been synonymous with educational innovation and achievement. Located in Thessaloniki, Greece since 1924, Anatolia College is a private, non-profit, international learning community imbued with the best ideals of Greek and American education. As one of the leading few institutions that offer quality education from pre-K all the way to graduate studies, Anatolia prepares eager learners from all over the world for the challenges of professional life and beyond, through its various academic divisions. We have two (2) physical locations with approximately 600 faculty and staff members across all locations.

Existing Technology Environment

The current environment consists of 125 servers: (9) physical, (114) virtual. Our current Disaster Recovery processes consists of backing up critical servers to an Enterprise storage appliance within a Datacenter environment in Athens. The data is then replicated In Germany, in a cloud storage appliance.   

Schedule of Events

RFI Released October 22, 2023 

RFI/RFP Pre-Bid Questions October 22, 2024

Proposal Due and Opened March 31, 2025

Scope of Work, Considerations & Requirements

The Anatolia College is requesting proposals from qualified firms interested in providing DR solutions, DRaaS, and Datacenter Colocation services. The scope of this proposal is to encompass a DR environment that includes:  

• Anatolia College access, as needed, to the DRaaS site (This would be used for facility inspection and audit requirements) 
• Data storage and replication 
• Compute resources to maintain a functioning environment during a disaster event
• Similar routing and logical network configuration in order to maintain functionality of the Anatolia College /server applications and reduce configuration changes during a disaster event 
• The Anatolia College’s ability to remotely configure and monitor assigned environments
• The requisite tools and support required to configure and monitor the environment.  

• NOTE: The Anatolia College is currently utilizing VMware 8 Ent Plus .  Providers that utilize a different toolset are encouraged to submit RFP responses so we can weigh those options. 
• Vendor’s assistance with 2 DR exercises annually.
• Pricing models and detail that show basic charges for connectivity, tools, storage, processing, etc.

Considerations

The information below should assist with the sizing and structure of services for the RFP response.

1. The provider should clearly document how their DRaaS solution functions
2. The provider should clearly document how data and systems are replicated to the DRaaS service
3. The provider should clearly document the type of connectivity offered as part of their solution
4. The provider should clearly document how additional connectivity/bandwidth usage is managed/ handled when the customer needs to utilize the DRaaS solution
5. The provider should clearly document how their own Disaster Recovery procedures and solution operates and what, if any, are the potential impacts to the customer’s DRaaS service
6. Provider should document all service tiers, along with associated RTO and RPO targets, tier pricing and daily resource usage charges.
7. Provider should describe the scope of support they provide during DR exercises and twice annually patching processes and the access Anatolia College will have to the servers.

Requirements

Support and Procedures

1. The provider shall provide reliable points of contact(s) for all incidents on a 7/24/365 basis.
2. The provider will be solely responsible for managing any incident, problem and changes that occur to the DRaaS infrastructure. Explain your role and experience in problem triage either during recovery exercising or in recovery operations.
3. The proposal response should express the time limit (if any) for the Anatolia College, to use the provided infrastructure once a disaster is declared, as well the incremental costs for recurring use.
4. Provide details on the extent which the provider trains the customer’s support staff in the use and management of the service.

Security 

a. Describe the provisions made for secure transfer of data from the Anatolia College primary site to the DR site (with any associated costs/schedules)

Storage

1. Detail tiered pricing and availability for data storage solution and data transfer between the customer’s primary site (the campus of Anatolia College) and the DRaaS location with intermittent write access and transaction logging including data transfer performance expectations. 
2. Describe how the provider solution will make sufficient storage continually available for incremental data replication from the primary site to the DR site; including the provider’s storage backup (DR) strategy.

Network

Anatolia College is member of National Infrastructures for Research and Technology (GRNet). Providers that utilize or support a GRNet point of presence are encouraged to submit RFP responses so we can weigh those options.

1. Provider to describe how circuits between sites are fail safe and of sufficient bandwidth to handle 100% of the Anatolia College peak demand.
2. Provider to configure a support the same infrastructure VLAN ID between Anatolia Servers and DR site (VxLAN), so as to provide an efficient and effective way of network communication.

Infrastructure

1. Provide a complete description of the proposed infrastructure including quantities, configuration and models of equipment, applications, types of data storage, memory, CPU/servers, network, storage used to support the DRaaS solution.
2. The provider must provide a sufficient infrastructure environment that will allow the Anatolia College to build a suitable DR environment to support business processes.

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

The provider should express their standard Service Level Agreements (SLA) as part of this proposal. Final SLA’s will be determined as part of contract negotiations. Provider should detail customer compensation for unmet SLAs.

Support and Maintenance

The Anatolia College requires a minimum of 3-years support with the option to continue annual support after the 3-year period has ended. The vendor should provide a detailed description of standard and extended support, maintenance, and the average response time for a support request.

For the request of more information, specification requirements, bid list, and further inquiries please contact Mr. Vasilis Karkampounas, IT Director, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..