The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation purchased dozens of servers on Russian processors for 86.3 million rubles

2023: Purchase of servers for 86.3 million rubles

At the end of May 2023, it became known that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation purchased 23 servers based on Russian Elbrus processors for a total amount of 86.3 million rubles. The publication CNews drew attention to this public procurement.

Each of the servers should contain four eight-core processors with a base clock speed of at least 1.2 GHz. The total amount of installed server RAM is at least 256 GB. It should have two 240GB SSDs each and 12 7680GB SSDs each. The equipment should be delivered to the Ministry of Internal Affairs by the end of September 2023.

Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation 23 servers on Russian processors in the amount of 86.3 million rubles

Based on the basic characteristics of the processors given in the terms of reference of the tender, ex-employee of the ICST, founder of the Russian electronics store imaxai.ru Maxim Gorshenin, in a conversation with CNews, concluded that they correspond to two 28-nanometer models from the ICST line: Elbrus-8C and Elbrus-8SV. The first of them was developed back in 2015 during the execution of the contract with the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The second, more modern, was also created by order of the ministry.

According to Gorshenin, the servers on the more advanced Elbrus-8SV are most likely to be in the Ministry of Internal Affairs - simply because Elbrus-8S should no longer have remained on the market (neither the ICST nor the company's partners). Not many of them were produced, while the Elbrus-8SV were previously brought to Russia in a fairly large edition.

The interlocutor of the publication on the Russian electronics market, as well as the general director of Promobit and the head of the Computer Engineering committee of ARPEMaksim Kolosov, argue that there can be no talk of any new chips in the supply of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The winning supplier will be able to use only old material resources - Elbrus, brought to Russia until February 24, 2022.^[1]

2022

Contract price reduction by more than half

On September 29, 2022, it became known that the Ministry of Internal Affairs managed to save more than half of the budget allocated for them on servers built on the basis of Elbrus processors. This follows from the information posted on the public procurement website.

The ministry announced the tender for the purchase of the mentioned 120 servers on August 30, 2022 in the format of an electronic auction. The initial contract price was set at 864.4 million rubles. Applications from applicants were accepted until September 15. Bidding took place on September 16.

At the end of the auction, the winner's offer amounted to 422.7 million rubles. Thus, the initial contract price was reduced by 441.7 million rubles. or 51%.

The winner was the Norsi-trans company, known for the development of hardware on Russian chips. Another applicant, whose name is not presented in public documents, tried to compete in the auction. The amount of his offer was at the level of 427 million rubles.

The deadline for the execution of the contract, which implies not only the supply of iron, but also its installation with commissioning, was established on November 21, 2022.

The purpose of servers in the TA is not spelled out. Its direct recipient will be the Main Information and Analytical Center (GIAC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow. True, the customer reserves the right to change the place of delivery within the Central Federal District or the North-Western Federal District with the exception of the Kaliningrad Region.

Such a significant decline in trading prices looks somewhat strange. On the one hand, on September 20, 2022, more significant "dumping" was reported at the server tender of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - more than four times. However, that problematic protracted purchase was initially launched in July, and the initial maximum contract price (NMCC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to an informed source, was formed back in April.

At that time, the official dollar exchange rate was significantly higher than at the end of September 2022 (during April it decreased from 83 to 71 rubles for $1). At the same time, according to the source, the business was then reinsured and proceeded from an approximate "real" rate of 120 rubles. for $1.

Moreover, at some point the tender was reformatted following the consideration of the complaint against it by the FAS. The Antimonopoly Service, having studied the appeal of the Santross company, ordered the Ministry of Internal Affairs to exclude from the procurement requirements a ban on the admission of foreign equipment. In the understanding of the source, the absence of such a requirement can "reduce the cost" of the purchase by almost half, but the customer, fulfilling the FAS order, did not reduce the NMCC.

The new tender started much later against the background of a fairly stable dollar exchange rate, NMCC was approved by the customer on August 18, 2022, and no complaints to the FAS overshadowed the project - it was not necessary to adjust the TA.

At the time of publication of this material, representatives of Norsi-Trance, which won the auction, could not explain what exactly allowed the company to make such a "discount."

At the same time, the competitor of Norsi-Trance at the auction brought down NMCC by almost the same amount, which suggests that the amount of the winner's offer is still quite market.

As follows from the terms of reference, the Ministry of Internal Affairs needed two-un four-processor Rack servers manufactured no earlier than 2022.

The fact that the ministry aimed specifically at chips from the Elbrus line, developed by the ICST company, indicates that the processors involved in the servers should support the eponymous instruction set architecture.

Each processor must have at least eight cores, and its clock speed must be at least 1.2 GHz. Chips Elbrus-8C"" (frequency up to 1.3 GHz) and "Elbrus-8SV" (frequency up to 1.5 GHz) are suitable for these characteristics. The situation with the interrupted supplies of the direct manufacturer of these processors, the Taiwan TSMC the factory most likely led to the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs will deliver equipment to the less advanced and older Elbrus-8S.

The total amount of installed RAM in the server should be at least 256 GB. Also, the server is supposed to install two SSD-drives of the same type for 240 GB each and 12 SSD-drives of the second type for 7680 GB each.

The TA states that each server shall be supplied with at least two power cables with C13-C14 connectors (IEC 60320), at least three Ethernet UTP cables of category 5 or higher with 8P8C connectors at least 5 m, at least two multimode optical cables with LC-LC connectors at least 5 m.

The pre-installed operating system should be included in the register of Russian software under the Ministry of Digital Engineering. In this case, the lack of indication of a specific vendor is quite unusual for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, because the ministry prioritizes Astra Linux of the Astra^[2] the Ministry of ^[3].

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation purchased servers based on Russian processors and remained dissatisfied with them

At the end of January 2022, it became known about the dissatisfaction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the use of servers based on Russian Elbrus processors. The corresponding letter of the deputy head of the department Vitaly Shulika sent to the Government of the Russian Federation.

As Kommersant writes with reference to this appeal, servers based on the Elbrus 8S processor do not support loading the operating system from storage media, "which does not allow providing a sufficient level of fault tolerance for software and hardware systems.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation purchased servers based on Russian processors and was dissatisfied with it

Also, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had difficulties on new servers when working with domestic system software. The agency plans to conduct additional testing of server performance with the manufacturer at the beginning of 2022 to show where and how to finalize domestic solutions for the needs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The supplier of servers for the Ministry of Internal Affairs "Norsi-Trans" knows about the claims to the performance of "Elbrus." The general director of the company Sergey Ovchinnikov said that the problems of compatibility of processors and software can be solved. In addition, he stressed that in the new model "Elbrus 8SV," which will replace "Elbrus 8C," "many flaws have already been fixed."

ICST (developer of Elbrusov) is working to improve system performance by the end of January 2022, company spokesman Konstantin Trushkin told the newspaper. According to him, "on the problems of I/O speed" a solution has already been found.

Roman Mylitsyn, head of the Astra Linux GC for Advanced Research (developing an OS based on Linux), admits that the problem of compatibility of domestic processors with Russian software exists and it takes time to close all customer needs - "each organization has its own business processes, application scenarios, specific software, performance and security requirements."^[4]

2021

Purchase of 80 servers based on Elbrus-8C processors for 350 million rubles

In May 2021, it became known about the plans of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to purchase 80 servers based on Elbrus-8S processors (manufacturer - MCST) for 350 million rubles. The agency buys IT equipment as part of a digital transformation strategy, for the implementation of which it is planned to spend 61 billion rubles, including 29 billion rubles for the creation and development of telecommunications infrastructure and data centers.

The Kommersant newspaper drew attention to the relevant tender documentation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. At the same time, experts interviewed by the publication warn of possible problems with the purchase of electronics that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other ministries may face. It's about a shortage of chips.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs buys servers based on Elbrus processors for 350 million rubles

By May 2021, the entire supply chain of microelectronics is overloaded, says the head of Baikal Electronics Andrei Evdokimov. According to him, problems arise both with the presence of chips, and with many components - power supplies, passive elements, various controllers , etc.

According to a source Kommersant in the microelectronics market, the situation may improve in at least a year and a half, "so plans for digitalization, state agencies which simply cannot be achieved without semiconductors, will have to be postponed."

Marvel Distribution CEO Alexei Melnikov doubts that the digitalization of ministries and state-owned companies will take place in 2022. He also admits problems in more distant prospects.

Ivan Pokrovsky, executive director of the Association of Russian Developers and Electronics Manufacturers, is more optimistic. According to him, the order for the components that the ICST and Baikal Electronics have already made, covers projects for 2021. By 2022, when the electronic component base is ready, the acute phase of the semiconductor shortage will pass, the expert is sure.^[5]

Restart the purchase of 298 servers

As I found out, CNews a large-scale purchase MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS servers on domestic "" processors Elbrus was reformatted and restarted with a significantly increased initial maximum contract price - by 217.5 million rubles. CNews announced this on March 12, 2021.

Initially, the tender for the supply of 298 units of equipment to the main regional departments of the ministry in forty regions of Russia was launched on February 26, 2021 in the format of an electronic auction with a starting price of the lot in the amount of 938.3 million rubles. It was planned to collect applications from applicants until March 17, but on March 5, 2021, the Ministry of Internal Affairs published a notice on the cancellation of the procurement procedure without specifying a specific reason.

On the same day, 3.5 hours later, the ministry launched a new procurement procedure with the previous and technical and other parameters, but with the starting price of the lot at 1,156 billion rubles. The collection of applicants' applications will now last until March 22, 2021.

Studying the procurement documentation, it can be assumed that in order to determine the initial price of the contract, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to a common established practice, sent requests to three potential procurement participants. In the first case, the unnamed respondent company No. 1 twice - on February 1 and 18, 2021 - sent to the ministry an estimated price for one server in the amount of 4.312 million rubles.

Respondent No. 2 first, on February 1, designated the amount of 4.813 million rubles, then, on February 19, changed it to 4.819 million rubles. In the column opposite the third source of price information, the amount of 3.149 million rubles is simply put once, without specifying the date.

In the restarted tender, a similar plate remained unchanged in relation to price information from the first two sources, but in the line for the third source the amount was transformed into 3.878 million rubles. and the date appeared on March 5, 2021 - the day of cancellation and restart of the purchase. As it is not difficult to notice, it was the price from the third source, being the smallest among competitors, that both times determined the initial amount of the contract - by multiplying it by the number of servers.

Under the terms of delivery, 27 main departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, including units Simferopol Sevastopol in and (), Crimea (), Terrible (Chechnya Nalchik Kabardino-Balkaria), (),, To Makhachkala Dagestan etc., Khanty-Mansiysk Vladivostok will receive six servers each. Another 10 departments, including in,,, etc., Cheboksary Ulan-Ude will receive Tyumen eight servers each. Management in and will acquire 16 Kazan To Ufa servers each. And finally, management will get 24 Krasnodar servers. Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the launch stage of the first of the two procurement procedures could not tell CNews about what kind of tasks this hardware will be used to solve.

As follows from the terms of reference of the tender, the Ministry of Internal Affairs needs rack-type servers. They should be built on four eight-core processors each, with a base clock speed within 1.4 GHz. The total amount of server RAM must be at least 256 GB. The size of 12 hot-swap SSDs should be at least 7680 GB. The server must have two USB 2.0 ports, a dedicated remote device management port, and two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The servers should be preinstalled with a Russian operational system included in the Register of Domestic Software under the Ministry of Digital Industry.

As an employee of the company MCST developing the Elbrus line, Maxim Gorshenin, noted earlier in a conversation with CNews, the 28-nanometer processors "" and "Elbrus-8SV" correspond equally to Elbrus-8C the aforementioned specified parameters of the chips. The first of them was developed in 2015, mass-produced since 2016. It contains the cores of the fourth generation Elbrus architecture with a clock frequency of up to 1300 MHz. According to the company, this chip allows you to build multiprocessor servers and workstations, as well as on-board computers that are demanding on the speed of processing and transmission of information.

The second of the mentioned models was released at the beginning of 2019, but according to the developer's website, it has not yet been mass-produced. This chip contains the cores of the fifth generation Elbrus architecture with a clock frequency of up to 1500 MHz. The scope is the same as that of the younger brother^[6] of^[7] by^[8].

Notes