VM WARE HOST REPLACEMENT

Primary Requirements:

Datacentre hosts

a) A converged server platform (e.g. blade servers in a chassis) with shared IO fabrics that contain East/West server network traffic. The platform will be deployed equally between our two Datacentres in an active-active configuration. The platform must be listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide as being supported by VMware ESXi 8.0+.

b) The shared server chassis should provide the following:

• Fabric domain scalability to allow up to 10 separate chassis in the same datacentre to contain east-west traffic.
• An integrated management console supporting all servers in the chassis with unified lifecycle management.
• Smart services for I/O aggregation and network automation.
• End to end Brocade support supporting native 32Gb fibre channel connectivity.
• Disaggregated components for simple upgrade capability.

c) The servers should provide the following:

• Capability to support 4 socket architecture.
• Support for RESTful API with Redfish
• Support 6 NVME drives per socket.
• Contain two boot devices in a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration, preferably M.2 devices that are suitable to boot VMware ESXi 8.0+
• Cyber-Resilient Architecture : Servers to deliver an immutable silicon-based chain of trust and combines it with comprehensive management tools to provide robust layers of security across hardware and firmware.
• Signed firmware updates using SHA-256 hashing with 2048-bit RSA encryption for signature for all key server components
• System Lockdown to prevent unauthorized configuration or firmware changes to a server when using vendor tools.
• System erase to, with proper authentication, securely and quickly erase data form local storage (HDD/SSD/NVMe) and embedded flash devices.

d) The following network connectivity will be required on all converged server platforms in the primary datacentres and should be provided on separate IO fabrics shared between the servers.

• 32Gbps fibre channel connectivity to our shared storage platform.
• 40Gbps Ethernet connectivity to our Datacentre network.
• 1/10Gbps copper Ethernet connectivity to our DMZ network.

e) The converged solution must meet or exceed the following hardware specifications:

• 952 total CPU cores (476 per datacentre) OR LESS
• 19TB RAM (9.5TB per datacentre) OR MORE

DR host

f) In addition to the specifications above, we also require a single rack mount host with the following specifications:

• 28 16 CPU cores
• 384GB RAM
• 1/10Gbps copper Ethernet connectivity
• No fibre-channel connectivity
• 2.2TB SSD storage.