Renovation of a data center facility in Detroit, Michigan. Completed plans call for the renovation of a data center facility.

Question Deadline 01/09/2026 at 12:00 PM ET Inquiries must be submitted to: procurement.questions@detroitk12.org with RFP 26- 0217 in the subject line. d. Telephone inquiries will not be accepted. Supplier shall provide necessary labor, material, equipment, transportation, and supervision for the upgrade of core district network in the district's two data centers and relocation of data center from Fisher Building to Mumford High School. The selected vendor shall deliver a complete, turnkey solution that is fully engineered, installed, configured, tested, documented, migrated, and placed into production. All hardware, software, and systems provided under this RFP must include a minimum of five (5) years of manufacturer support, maintenance, software subscriptions, and licensing, beginning at final acceptance or production cutover. Data Center Build-Out at Mumford High School The vendor shall design, furnish, install, and commission a fully functional data center environment including: Power Infrastructure o 50 kW diesel generator o 100A automatic transfer switch o Scalable 30 kVA to 50 kVA UPS system o Surge protection rated at 100 kA minimum o Power distribution units and overhead busway Cooling and Environmental Controls o In row cooling units (Liebert CRV or equivalent) o Microchannel condensers o Cold aisle containment o Temperature, humidity, and leak detection sensors Racks and Cabling o Minimum of four 42U racks Intelligent monitored PDUs o Structured cabling, labeling, and cable management Fire Suppression o Clean agent fire suppression system (FM 200 or equivalent) o NFPA 70, 72, and 2001 compliant Engineering and Construction o Mechanical and electrical engineering o Permitting and inspection coordination o Rigging, conduit installation, panels, and terminations o As built drawings and sealed engineering documents All components must include five years of warranty and manufacturer support. Core Network Infrastructure Replacement DPSCD is seeking to fully replace the existing Cisco ACI based data center network fabric with a simplified, highly reliable, and operationally supportable core network architecture deployed at both district data centers: o Mumford High School (secondary data center) o Detroit School of Arts (primary data center) The proposed solution must prioritize operational simplicity, stability, predictable behavior, and ease of troubleshooting over complex policy driven models. Architecture Requirements The proposed architecture must: o Fully retire and replace Cisco ACI controllers, fabrics, and dependencies o Use a standards based, well understood network design o Support dual site deployment and failover o Provide high availability without unnecessary architectural complexity o Support clear Layer 2 and Layer 3 segmentation o Enable straightforward disaster recovery and maintenance operations ACI based refresh or expansion solutions are not desired. Hardware and Software o High availability modular or chassis based core switches o Fabric or spine and leaf switches as appropriate o Redundant supervisors, power supplies, and fabrics o Five years of licensing, software updates, and technical support Migration Services The vendor shall: o Assess the existing ACI environment o Migrate all VLANs, VRFs, routing domains, ACLs, QoS, and services o Retire ACI controllers and policies o Validate routing, application performance, and failover o Execute migration with minimal disruption DDI Solution Upgrade The vendor shall design and implement a modern enterprise grade DDI solution across both data centers. The solution must provide: o Highly available DNS services o Highly available DHCP services with failover o Centralized IP address management o Role based access control and audit logging o Security logging and integration with district monitoring tools Migration shall include all DNS zones, DHCP scopes, reservations, and IP address records. Five years of licensing and support is required. Migration of Production Systems The vendor shall migrate all production systems including: o Virtualization platforms o Physical and virtual servers o Storage and backup systems o PeopleSoft on premises components o Network services such as DNS, DHCP, NTP, and RADIUS o Security and monitoring systems Migration must include validation, rollback planning, and post migration optimization. Fisher Building Data Center Decommissioning The vendor shall: o Power down and remove all equipment o Remove racks, cabling, and electrical infrastructure o Isolate and shut down legacy power and cooling systems o Dispose of equipment in accordance with district and environmental standards o Provide a decommissioning closeout report Documentation, Training, and Turnover The vendor shall provide: o Network diagrams (Layer 1 through Layer 3) o Rack elevations and power maps o Configuration backups and templates o Disaster recovery documentation o Monitoring and alerting guides o Training for district IT staff VENDOR QUALIFICATIONS Vendors must demonstrate: o At least 10 years of experience in mission critical data center projects o Proven experience migrating away from Cisco ACI or similarly complex fabrics o Expertise in simplified, highly reliable core network architectures o Experience with enterprise DDI solutions such as Infoblox or BlueCat o Successful delivery of E-Rate Category 2 projects o Ability to provide integrated mechanical, electrical, network, and IT services