Web Hosting Services

1.0 PURPOSE

The departments of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) jointly require the services of a contractor to provide web hosting services. The services will be required for a one (1) year period commencing from date of contract award.

At its own discretion, ISED/AAFC may decide to exercise the option to extend the term of the contract by two (2) additional one (1) year periods.

2.0 TITLE OF PROJECT

Web Hosting Services

3.0 BACKGROUND

ISED and AAFC are responsible for providing website support services for multi-jurisdictional partnerships across Canada. To meet partner business requirements, these websites cannot be hosted on ISED or AAFC infrastructure and must be hosted by a third party provider. At the present time, ISED/AAFC requires these managed web hosting services for BizPaL, AgPal and the Canada Business Network, but may also require web hosting services for additional website(s) as business requirements evolve.

On behalf of ISED/AAFC, the current suppliers provide fully managed web hosting services.

BizPaL

BizPaL is a unique collaboration of federal, provincial/territorial (FPT), and local governments working together in a new service delivery model to improve access to information on permits and licenses required from all levels of government to start up and operate a business. Businesses use a simple on line tool to identify a customized list of licenses and permits for a chosen business sector in a particular geographic location. BizPaL is readily accessible by taking a no "wrong door" approach, meaning the service is available on all partner web sites. Currently, all provinces/territories and 700+ municipalities are participating in BizPaL.

To facilitate the delivery of the BizPaL service, the procurement of infrastructure as services is required to host the BizPaL technology platform. The technology platform must be hosted by a third party provider in accordance with the Official BizPaL Agreements, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and the Intergovernmental Letters of Agreement (ILA), including signatories from multi layers of government.

AgPal

AgPal is a web-based discovery tool developed by AAFC to help farmers and others in the agriculture and agri-business sector find the federal, provincial, and territorial programs and services that specifically apply to them.

Canada Business Network

The Canada Business Network (CBN) is a program that delivers one stop access to reliable, up to date, relevant information and tools to Canadian businesses and entrepreneurs. CBN integrates resources from all three levels of government and not for profit groups. It provides fast and easy access to information and services online, in person or by phone.

CanadaBusiness.ca is the online service delivery channel for the CBN and is the Government of Canada’s service to business portal. The web site provides information on a wide variety of services, programs and regulations at the federal and provincial levels of government to businesses across Canada. CBN offers its clients information and referrals that are tailored to their needs, regardless of their phase in the business life cycle, geographic location or business type. The Canada Business Network provides small businesses information and assistance in:

• starting your venture
• managing operations
• persevering through adverse times
• growing your business

4.0 PROJECT REQUIREMENTS/OBJECTIVES

The objective of this requirement is to seek the services of a web hosting vendor to provide a fully managed web hosting service starting from contract award for one (1) year and an option for two (2) additional one (1) year extensions.

The bidder is expected to establish a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that will serve as the service standard expectation during the course of the contract and meet all the infrastructure requirements, including other operational requirements, to support and monitor the needs of the ISED/AAFC infrastructure.

The SLA should specify items such as, but not limited to, the following:

• 99.9% network uptime guarantee
• 30 minute initial response guarantee from help desk
• Restoration of service or working with ISED/AAFC to reach an agreeable solution within 1 hour of problem identification
• Credit for restoration downtime: 5% of the fees for each additional 30 minutes of downtime (or portion thereof) beyond 1 hour

  l

  The requirements have been divided into three (3) main sections:

1. (Section 6.1) Technical Management Service Requirements relating to the management of the technical infrastructure such as security, the data centre environment, data backup, monitoring/reporting, and service level standards.
2. (Section 6.2) Service Support Requirements, outlining the planning and guidance activities to support the management and growth of the ISED/AAFC online assets.
3. (Section 6.3) Infrastructure Resource Requirements, outlining the server capacity and bandwidth specifications for the fully managed web hosting service.

5.0 SCOPE OF WORK

The bidder selected through this RFP process is to demonstrate that it can provide a fully managed web hosting service to support both open source and proprietary products as detailed under the operational requirements. The bidder is required to demonstrate they have the ability to respond to ISED/AAFC changing business needs.

6.0 HOSTING REQUIREMENTS

6.1) Technical Management Service Requirements

a) DNS Management (DNS Management is not required for “Unit B”)

• Support for multiple record types
• Multiple regional service endpoints
• Support for multiple nested sub domains
• Management of the default time to live (TTL) and resource record TTL values
• IPv6 compatibility
• Manage mail servers, zone delegation and SPF records
• Import and export BIND 9 formatted zone files

  b) Installing/Deploying

• Assistance with database and user provisioning
• Caching installation, configuration & patching of Servers (Memcached and Varnish)
• Database installation, configuration & patching (MySQL and MSSQL)
• Programming Language and Framework installation & configuration (including PHP, Python, Ruby, Rails etc.)
• Firewall installation & configuration (IP tables, ufw and Windows or Linux Firewall)
• Support for creating, configuring, and deleting Load Balancers
• Support for creating, configuring, and deleting domains and records
• Terminal Services role and customer supplied license installation
• Ordering, installing and renewing certificates
• Limit access to the servers to pre-approved employees
• Install New Relic or equivalent agent for web and database servers

  c) Configuration

• Basic guidance for managing infrastructure using the control panel
• Basic guidance on different alarm conditions to alert on for monitoring
• Basic optimization of database
• Caching installation, configuration & patching (Memcached and Varnish)
• Database installation, configuration & patching (MySQL and MSSQL)
• Managing domain account
• Programming Language and Framework installation & configuration (including PHP, Python, Ruby, Rails etc.)
• Server operating system configuration & patching
• Firewall installation & configuration (IP tables, ufw and Windows or Linux Firewall)
• Support for creating, configuring, and deleting domains and records
• Technical guidance on server configuration
• Server Operating System troubleshooting
• Web server configuration
• Configure New Relic or equivalent agent for optimal monitoring and with minimal performance overhead

  d) Patching/Updating

• Caching installation, configuration & patching (Memcached and Varnish)
• Database installation, configuration & patching (MySQL)
• Server operating system configuration & patching
• Updating/patching New Relic or equivalent monitoring agent as new versions are released

  e) Monitoring

• 20 http status and response time checks from 3 monitoring zones

• 24x7x365 Monitoring - URL Content, Port, Ping - At least 5 checks
• Assistance with provisioning service monitors
• Guidance for monitoring installed services
• Server operating system monitoring
• Verify network, server, dns, and database infrastructure availability
• Web server monitoring & troubleshooting (Apache)

  f) Databases (Databases is not required for “Unit B”)

• Assistance moving databases and tables into the infrastructure
• 24x7x365 Monitoring and issue assistance
• Authentication troubleshooting
• Caching troubleshooting (Memcached and Varnish)
• Database troubleshooting (MySQL)

  g) Backups (Backups is not required for “Unit B”)

• MySQL Database replication and backup
• Retain daily backups for a minimum of 14 days, along with minimum 1 weekly backup
• File level backups (on demand, hourly, daily, weekly) with custom scheduling

6.2) Service Support Requirements

Each Unit A or Unit B specified in Section 6.3 may require individual and separate accounts for service support. Contacts from ISED and AAFC are to be identified at contract award.

Planning and Design

• Technical guidance on scaling and environment architecture
• Technical guidance on capacity planning
• Technical guidance on security setup
• Technical guidance on server configuration Web server configuration (Apache)
• Basic guidance in using the control panel to manage the environment
• Basic guidance to create, schedule, restore, and configure backup jobs

Timing and Frequency

• For service outages, email and/or telephone inquiries must be acknowledged within 30 minutes with a description on the course of action
• Provide proactive issue identification and resolution
• Unless an ad hoc request is made by ISED/AAFC for assistance in optimizing the service, the company will carry out a complete review of the service, propose re-configurations and implement optimizations on a quarterly basis. The number of requests for optimization will not exceed 6 times per year per unit of managed service (Unit A / B)

6.3) Infrastructure Resource Requirements

Infrastructure Resource requirements are specified below. At the present time, ISED/AAFC requires the following:

• One (1) “Unit A” of managed web hosting services for BizPaL at ISED
• One (1) “Unit A” of managed web hosting services for Canada Business Network at ISED
• One (1) “Unit B” of managed web hosting services for AgPal at AAFC

  ISED/AAFC may require additional “Unit A” OR “Unit B” of managed web hosting services as business requirements evolve.

  Specifications for Unit A and Unit B are provided below.

  NOTE: A proposal for a cloud solution is acceptable.

Specification for “Unit A”

Specification for “Unit B”

For the purpose of the present requirement, it is anticipated that each “Unit A” will consist of a minimum of the following:

Support level requirements identified in:

• Technical Management Service Requirements (Section 6.1)
• Service Support Requirements (Section 6.2)

Three (3) Web Servers, each with minimum specification:

• RAM: 15GB,
• Virtual CPUs: 6
• Disk space: 620GB
• Public Network: 200Mbps
• Internal Network: 400Mbps

One (1) Database Server, with minimum specification:

• RAM: 8GB
• Redundant storage with built in data replication

One (1) Load Balancer, with minimum specification:

• Concurrent Connections: 100
• Outgoing Bandwidth: 500GB

One (1) Backup Solution, with minimum specification:

• 2 Terabytes
• Incremental backup with custom scheduling
• System and file based restore

Firewall:

• Separate firewall (hardware or software) that works in NAT mode (for separation of internal and external addresses of the servers) and is able to control all connections to servers (depending on the port numbers)

DNS:

• IP Anycast Routing
• IPv6 ready
• Fast global DNS propagation

SSL certificates for five (5) sub-domains:

• Thawte SGC SuperCert
• Validity period: 1 year
• Number of server licenses: 1
• Number of Subject Alternative Names (domains/subdomains): 5

For the purpose of the present requirement, it is anticipated that each “Unit B” will consist of a minimum of the following:

Support level requirements identified in:

• Technical Management Service Requirements except where noted as not required for “Unit B” (Section 6.1)
• Service Support Requirements (Section 6.2)

Two (2) Web Servers, each with minimum specification:

• RAM: 8GB,
• Virtual CPUs: 4
• Disk space: 300GB
• Public Network: 200Mbps
• Internal Network: 400Mbps
• Outgoing Bandwidth: 600GB

Firewall:

• Separate firewall (hardware or software) that works in NAT mode (for separation of internal and external addresses of the servers) and is able to control all connections to servers (depending on the port numbers)

SSL certificates for five (5) sub-domains:

• Thawte SGC SuperCert
• Validity period: 1 year
• Number of server licenses: 1
• Number of Subject Alternative Names (domains/subdomains): 5