SIRC supports Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure that provide services to more than 110K users for Air Combat Command (ACC) and other Air Force organizations. SIRC is essential to assisting ACC in moving all of its servers and devices from the legacy network domain to the Air Force Integrated Network (AFIN). Additionally, SIRC requirement is to provide senior analyst expertise to recommend, create, and draft proposed architecture design of new storage array infrastructure for supported applications; as well as updating/creating diagrams of current infrastructure; generating support documentation/test plans, and provide knowledge transfer to other supporting administrators. Since network security is vital to protecting the network, SIRC is required to understand/support Air Force technical orders, Group policies, patching requirements, and system security technical implementation guides (STIGs) requirements.

During this evaluation period SIRC has performed very well while supporting the SAN projects associated with the Disaster Recovery/Contingency Operations (DR/COOP) SAN Engineer. SIRC worked collaboratively with government, SIRC and active duty military staff to develop a realistic report to outline how we could temporarily shut down a legacy EMC DMX-3 SAN without an existing maintenance support contract. Despite significant organizational constraints, SIRC was able to work with all parties to provide a status report which directly attributed to the decision to suspend the planned outage which may have caused a critical loss of data. Prior to SIRC accepting this contract, this SAN had already experienced catastrophic failure and if the planned outage had been executed it would have incurred a similar circumstance. Furthermore, SIRC worked with the manufacturer to ensure that the report was accurate enough for both the highly technical and executive staffs to finalize a decision. In addition to the previous project, SIRC was tasked to repurpose an existing Dell SAN to support the ACC Commercial Mobile Technology Productivity (CMT Pro) project.

The timeline for the project was compressed due to the aging hardware currently support CMT Pro. SIRC worked with current staff and helped to establish a timeline to complete the effort. SIRC consulted with the vendor and other staff to standup a robust fault tolerant SAN to support CMT Pro. The configuration is stable and will continue supporting the organization in the future.

SIRC ensured that work hours were flexible based upon Air Combat Command (ACC) Communications Support Squadron's requirements to perform system maintenance (patch servers, upgrade software, replace hardware, etc.). For the CMT Pro project, SIRC overcame several difficult challenges related to ACC network and system architectures. Although it is expected that SIRC solve these types of issues, SIRC was extremely effective in working with our staff to ultimately deliver a fully operational SAN architecture on time. The SAN architecture was a critical path in our timeline and completing that portion on time ensured that we could bring in the other team members online to complete their project task. In addition, SIRC established weekly meetings to ensure that all project objectives were being meet and quickly established SCRUM reports to ensure that all parties are current.

Although the EMC SAN has a proprietary interface, SIRC doggedly worked with EMC to ensure that ACC received a report as to the health of the hardware. The SIRC management team were involved in all aspects of the communications and showed a vested interest into the outcome of the discussion with EMC. The SIRC management team continued to maintain direct contact with the COR to ensure that ACC is receiving the necessary support required for the contract. Also, SIRC’s management team is very aware of the specialized skillsets to support an EMC and has gone out of their way to obtain outside vendor support when necessary.

SIRC met compliance with all financial, environmental, safety, and labor regulations. SIRC complied with all contract clauses, reporting requirements as well as cost accounting standards and disclosure statements within this reporting period. SIRC complied with contractual safety requirements and labor laws; including affirmative action and EEO compliance requirements.

During this evaluation period has performed very good while supporting the DR/COOP SAN Engineer contract. Issues and concerns were resolved in a timely manner and there were sufficient follow-up calls/visits to ensure that SIRC contractor support was provided as expected. SIRC was instrumental in the implementation of the CMT Pro project. The ability of SIRC to reach out to other agencies and vendors is a critical part in ensuring that ACC Storage Arrays functions as design. SIRC assisted in determining the hardware specifications for replacement hard drives and resolving issues in the NIPRNET virtualization. After intense troubleshooting from all parties, SIRC assisted in updating the Dell Storage Array to an updated Host Based Security System definition that was compiled by another team. This other team no longer supported the environment. SIRC recommendations to support our SAN environment has been used internally to evaluate future storage requirements. 

From LANGLEY CPARS