February 15, 2013
RFP for a Review of the NPSD Network Infrastructure Design Overview & Scope of Work
North Penn School District in Lansdale, PA is comprised of thirteen elementary schools, three middle schools,
one high school, and one alternative school serving approximately 14,000 students with 2,000 employees. This
RFP is for a review of the current network design to determine infrastructure requirements for the next three
school years: 2013-2014, 2014-2015, and 2015-2016.
The scope of work is to review the current network architecture and infrastructure design for the WAN and
Voice infrastructure, and determine if the existing system addresses the key business objectives and
requirements for the school district over the next three school years. Key areas such as network availability,
capacity, performance, system redundancy, compatibility, and security that contribute to the overall experience
of the network must be included in the review. The review and subsequent recommendations should be based
on the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) best practices framework. The project will be
implemented in three phases. Proposals should include a response for all three phases. You may contact Robin
Lutcher, Technology Manager at Lutcher@npenn.org with questions. An overview of the current network
infrastructure is included in Appendix A.
Phase I: Review of Network Infrastructure and Overall Design
Scope of Work for Phase I
 Current Infrastructure Product assessment and recommendations
o End of life
o Vendor support
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Network Availability, Capacity and Demand assessment and recommendations
o Facility assessment
o Existing topology
o Logical configuration
o Network demand (performance)
Configuration and Change Management Assessment
o Network element for configuration management (process and Control)
o Naming Scheme
o IP Scheme (IP address, allocation, subnet designs)
o VLAN Scheme (Allocation and design)
Network Architecture Development and Recommendation
o Network baseline assessment
o Future networked computing strategies
o WAN and Voice network architecture consistency and growth flexibility
Network service transition assessment and recommendations
o Release and deployment management
o Assessment management and knowledge database
Network service operation assessment and recommendations
o Problem management assessment
1 
o Access management assessment
o Technical and operations assessment
Continual network service improvement assessment and recommendations
o Skill gap assessment
o Projected needs for BYOD
o Projected needs for Online Assessments
o Projected needs for Cyber Learning Options
Phase II: Development of Plan and Bid Specifications
Scope of Work for Phase II
 The successful vendor will work with district technology staff to develop a 3 year technology
infrastructure plan to meet the requirements for classroom instruction and business operations. The
technology infrastructure plan will span school years: 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017.
 The successful vendor will work with district technology staff to develop bid specifications, evaluate the
bid proposals, and make a recommendation for the bid award. The work of this vendor will ensure that
appropriate warranties are included and all components are compatible. Additionally the vendor will
determine the total cost of ownership and provide a cost comparison.
Phase III: Plan Implementation
 The successful vendor will oversee implementation, ensure that all systems are installed as designed,
and enforce warranties.
Proposals should be sent electronically to Jeri Reinking at reinkj@npenn.org no later than 2:00 pm on Friday,
March 8, 2013. A complete proposal will include a resume of experience, at least 3 references from school
districts supporting 10,000 or more students and staff, credentials for those who would be assigned to complete
the work, a cost proposal for each phase, and a sample proposed contract.
2 Appendix A
Technology Department Overview
Network Overview
Sunesys Fiber: Current Private fiber providing one gig connections to each building, Within next school year:
Close ring for redundancy and add another point of entry
WAN: routed, utilizing the private fiber with Cisco routers at each site. Some sites have 3550’s and some are
newer. Gig connection with a gig uplink to the remainder of the building.
Wireless: Wireless install will change all cabling to CAT 6E from CAT 5. HS completed. Proposed wireless
upgrade from Cisco to Aruba to be completed by 12/13.
Voice Network: Combined with the data network. Utilize QoS to ensure proper bandwidth for voice
communications. Utilizes a separate VLan. Installed approximately 8 years ago. Proposed: Upgrade to the
software that supports the voice (phones) and voicemail system. To be completed by Feb 19, 2013. VoIP to the
classroom is being added with renovations. Secondary utilizes VoIP in offices. Elementary classrooms as
renovated. Current renovations: KU, IN, NA, NW. Classrooms utilize an old PBX intercom system. Different
at each location: e.g Bogan. Each system is integrated into the IP system. Technical assistants at each building
have the ability to access wireless IP phones. As of 2/18/13 the VoIP system will utilize:
2 - C220 M3 USC servers running VM, most current version of Cisco Cisco Unified Call Manager (CUCM8.6)
And virtualized Unity Connection System (UCS), Standard system without any add-ons.
Storage: EMC VNX 5300 Block Only – capacity 22.2 TB. Installed July 2012. Different types of storage 22.5
TB SAS drives and 45TB NL SAS Drives. (2) 100 gig of fastcashe drives. Installed on H: G: S: and U: drive
storage. SQL servers with HP-C7000 Chassis. Utilize a fiber channel network to connect all accessible
servers. Special services such as – list some and note that due to recent install, training is needed.
Backup Current – (2) stacked MSL 6000 tape libraries connected through elevators. (4) LTO4 tape drives and
(4) LTO2 tape drives. Connected with fiber switches to the SAN. Proposed – AVAMAR by EMC – with 1x4
2 TB node for a total of 6TB. Connected with a 1 gig backplane. Disk Backup. Utilizes de-duplication and
built in redundancy for disk and node failure, Will reside at the warehouse.
Number of students = 13,000+, staff = 2000+, and computers and other technology devices = 8,000 +
Copiers and printers are all networked. Need number of these items.
Number of servers – 125.
Future plans: Increase in mobile devices. BYOD. Digital Resources. Cyber options.
Our email messaging environment is an Exchange 2003 Enterprise SP2 Front-end/Back-end configuration.
The front end server is installed behind our firewall. The front end server (NPMAILOWA)provides web based
mail access via OWA ( Outlook Web Access). It also acts as a SmartHost processing and directing mail
delivery from our Internet email gateway (NPEXCHANGE) as well as multiple internal hosts ( Web servers,
application servers, etc.) This server does not house any mailboxes and is a physical server. Access to send mail
via this SmartHost is granted via Access Controls within Exchange. Client access to this server externally is
done via HTTPS over port 443, and is secured by a SSL certificate.
The back-end server (NPSDEXCHANGE) houses all of our mailboxes, antivirus, SPAM and content filtering
services. Internal clients using the full version of Outlook, access this server directly via their Outlook client.
Communication between this and other Exchange servers is encrypted by default as a native function of
Exchange.
3 The Back-end Server NPMAIL1 provides connectivity to the Exchange organization for enterprise faxing
services via Xmedius. This server provides no other services and does not house any mailboxes.
The back-end Server (NPFAX) provides enterprise faxing services for the district. This server does not house
any mailboxes, yet require Exchange Tools to be installed to give Xmedius visibility into our Exchange
organization.
Our Internet email gateway server (NPEXCHANGE) is not an exchange server, yet it provides mail gateway
services as well as anti-virus and SPAM filtering via Trend Internet Messaging Security Suite for Windows. All
external email passes through this server both into and out of the district.
NPFAX
RG: NPSD
AG: NPSD
Internet
SMTP
RoutingGroupMaster: NPMAILOWA
Total Server's: 3
NPEXMAIL1
Version 6.5
(Build 7638.2: Service Pack 2)
NPEXCHANGE
NPSDEXCHANGE
Version 6.5
(Build 7638.2: Service Pack 2)
NPMAILOWA
(FrontEnd Server)
Version 6.5
(Build 7638.2: Service Pack 2)
4