Engagement Type:
Contract
Short Description:
The Network Operations Center (NOC) in the District of Columbia Government and provides full 24 X 7 District-wide network monitoring and reporting services to keep the District’s Wide Area Network up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Complete Description:
The Network Operations Center takes full responsibility for proactively watching, analyzing, reporting on, and resolving network related problems before they impact a District Agency. As a result, District Agencies are freed to focus on their core mission activities knowing that the District’s Wide Area Network is stable and robust enough to handle any demands on performance.
With the Network Operations Center, OCTO provides network monitoring and management services to every District Agency that is connected to the DCWAN. OCTO combines powerful management tools and integrated applications with proven methodologies and processes to deliver high-quality services that are designed to increase network availability and optimize performance across the DCWAN. The various components that make up OCTO’s network monitoring and management service are listed below:
• Fault Monitoring Service
• Performance Monitoring Service
• Network Monitoring Service
In order to proactively monitor and manage the entire DCWAN the District requires skilled NOC Operators to augment District staff. This technical resource/position to be contracted plays a key role in maintaining smooth operations within the NOC environment. As the DCWAN grows and many of its systems, such as Internet, e-mail, and mission critical applications require 24x7 access, it becomes extremely critical that these systems are proactively monitored and managed. The Network Operations Center Analyst II position will serve as the “eyes and ears” of the NOC during non-business hours.
The contractor will report to the NOC Manager/Team Lead for assignment of duties and tasks. The contractor is responsible for performing daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly maintenance procedures as defined in the NOC Operational Guides. In addition, ad-hoc requests will be sent by any of the District Agencies or the designated OCTO official for tasks such as performing a system reboot, unscheduled backup, partial systems/data restore, or troubleshoot a problem.
Since this position requires a wide range of technical skills relating to WAN, Email, and Internet/web systems, this is not a junior-level position. Anything less than a fully qualified engineer will result in a delay to respond to incidents and a reduced capability to perform many of the troubleshooting and maintenance tasks that will be required.
The contractor shall be assigned to a specific shift that of the overall 24 hour per day, 7 day per week (24x7) staffed Network Operations Center (NOC) monitoring and reporting.
The contractor shall use OCTO’s Network Management System (NMS) to perform this function. The Contractor shall work with other District Agencies to identify events that should be monitored and shall request updates to the NMS as necessary to successfully monitor events on a daily basis. The contractor shall respond to events and outages on those systems, contact designated individuals responsible for supporting those systems, escalate as necessary, and report on the progress of restoration.
The contractor shall perform Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for network problems when requested by OCTO.
The contractor shall perform periodic (hourly, per shift, daily) functional and performance testing of existing production network components, paths, networks, sub-networks, systems and software as required. Verification of all tests shall be recorded in an operations log. The contractor shall follow existing standard operating procedures (SOPs) to perform tests and will modify the SOP as required to support new tests as well as to terminate tests on systems no longer in production.
The contractor shall provide day-to-day operation, maintenance and system administration of OCTO network infrastructure devices. This includes but is not limited to hardware and software on routers, hubs, switches, encryption devices, and security devices. The contractor shall respond to and fix network problems. These services shall be performed twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week, possibly including Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Years Day. The contractor shall gather network performance and statistical data for problem analysis. The contractor shall troubleshoot network problems by responding to trouble calls, performing fault isolation and restoring service.
The contractor shall find and accurately report all network infrastructure problems within ten (10) minutes of a failure. The Contractor shall respond to resolve the problem within 15 minutes after first discovery of the problem.
The contractor shall perform capacity management of the DCWAN, to include the installation, configuration, testing, maintenance and de-installation of network infrastructure hardware and software as necessary to support increased or decreased DCWAN requirements.
The contractor shall be responsible for placing into production all network infrastructure devices at OCTO. This includes, but is not limited to receipt, initial inventory, set up, burn-in, testing, software loading, and deployment of hardware. In performing these services, the contractor shall adhere to policies and procedures as established by/with OCTO.
The contractor shall perform performance management on network infrastructure devices at the OCTO as needed. Such analysis may include, but is not limited to: measurement of current traffic on existing production networks; network traffic load balancing and segmentation; determination of maximum device load for segments and servers; isolation of systems that degrade DCWAN performance; and evaluation of performance management software packages.
The contractor shall perform configuration management of network infrastructure devices operated by Network Operations Center. This includes updating Visio drawings of the network, fiber optic schematics/databases, IP addresses and DNS name space databases. It also includes maintaining baseline hardware and software configurations for all network infrastructure devices and network and office automation servers.
The contractor shall be responsible for upgrading network infrastructure hardware/software/firmware as directed by the NOC Team Lead or designee. The Contractor shall produce an Installation Plan for all upgrades. Upgrades approved by OCTO shall be installed by the NOC. OCTO shall provide hardware and software used in the upgrade.
Behavior Characteristics:
-Develop and maintain productive working relationships with management, customers, team members, and other groups.
-Ability to exercise the initiative and resourcefulness necessary for prioritizing multiple and on-going projects.
Required / Desired Skills
Skill
Required / Desired
Amount of Experience
Expertise Rating
Server, LAN, and WAN support experience
Required
5 Years
3 - Expert
Network management software tools and agents
Required
3 Years
1 - Basic
Wide area network design, implementation, and management
Required
4 Years
2 - Proficient
HW and SW support for Windows NT/2000/2003 server, Unix hosts, Cisco
Required
3 Years
2 - Proficient
Microsoft IIS and Microsoft SQL
Highly desired
3 Years
2 - Proficient
Domain Name Services (DNS) in a large-scale enterprise environment
Highly desired
3 Years
2 - Proficient
Network General/Netscout network sniffer exp.
Required
2 Years
2 - Proficient
CCNA
Required
4 Years
3 - Expert