Objectives

The primary objective of this tender is to procure a service provider for the outright purchase of enterprise-engineered IT infrastructure, supported by 60 months of support and maintenance, specifically for the Deeds Registration Trading Entity (DRTE). The goal is to replace outdated, end-of-life infrastructure with modern, high-performance, and highly available systems that support mission-critical applications, enable scalable storage and compute capacity, and establish a "hot" disaster recovery (DR) site to ensure 100% system availability and stability across all deeds registries.

Scope

The scope encompasses the design, supply, delivery, installation, configuration, commissioning, support, and maintenance of hardware and enterprise systems at both the production site (North Gauteng Deeds Registry) and the DR site (Cape Town Deeds Registry). The infrastructure includes:

• Server hardware: Six high-performance rackmount servers with specified configurations.
• Storage arrays: Two all-flash NVMe-based storage arrays with scalable capacity.
• Backup solutions: Enterprise-class backup systems supporting Oracle workloads and data protection features.
• Networking: Data center network switches, SAN/Fibre Channel infrastructure, and related components.
• Disaster Recovery site infrastructure with identical specifications to the production environment.
• Support for active-active replication between sites, near-synchronous and asynchronous replication for long-distance DR, and security features including encryption and DLP integration.

The infrastructure must be energy-efficient, space-optimized, and compatible with current technology stacks, with no migration tasks included as DRTE's resources will handle them.

Technical Requirements

• Hardware: Servers with Intel Xeon processors, minimum 64 cores, 2048GB DDR5 RAM, enterprise SSDs, multi-speed network adapters, Fibre Channel HBAs, and hypervisor support for Linux and Windows.
• Storage: Two all-flash NVMe arrays, each with at least 100TB effective capacity, scalable to 1PB, supporting deduplication, compression, replication, and cloud backup.
• Backup: Enterprise backup solution supporting 200TB initial capacity, Oracle RMAN integration, immutable backups, encryption, and multi-cloud support.
• Networking: 25Gb uplinks, 100Gb ports, support for low-latency NVMe over Fabrics, and integrated security features.
• Security & Data Protection: Encryption at rest, access controls, DLP integration, real-time content inspection, and policy enforcement for sensitive data.
• Support & Maintenance: 5-year comprehensive support including hardware upgrades, software updates, and active-active DR capabilities.

Skills Requirements

• Experience in Enterprise Hardware/Server Implementation: Minimum 3 years of proven successful implementation of similar enterprise hardware projects, with reference letters confirming scope, complexity, and client satisfaction.
• Project Management: Key resources must have at least 3 years of project management experience, with relevant qualifications (minimum NQF 6) and detailed CVs.
• Solution Architecture: Demonstrated experience in designing enterprise IT architectures, with proof of relevant certifications (e.g., professional certifications from Google, Oracle, AWS, Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft).
• Technical Support & Resources: Skilled personnel with at least 2-3 years of experience in technical support roles, supporting enterprise hardware and infrastructure, with appropriate certifications.
• Methodology & Implementation Strategy: A comprehensive work plan including milestones, active-active DR planning, DLP integration, and proven methodology aligned with best practices.