Analysing a Company’s Existing Infrastructure and Suggest a Virtualization Implementation - IT/Computer Science Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:
Overview and Objectives
The following assignment is used to give you an exercise in analysing a company’s existing infrastructure and suggest a virtualization implementation.  You will also examine alternative vendor products and make some comparisons.
This assignment requires you to complete the following:
Examine an existing systemDraw conclusions on how to configure an appropriate new infrastructure that leverages the advantages of virtualization.
Make a reasoned argument to support the conclusionsGraduate Qualities
By undertaking this assessment, you will progress in the development of the qualities of a University of South Australia graduate. The table below indicates the weighting as a proportion of this assessment piece given to developing one or more of the qualities.
 
No. Graduate quality Unit?Weighting
1 Body of knowledge 1.0
2 Lifelong learning 1.0
3 Effective problem solving 1.0
4 Work autonomously and collaboratively 0.25
5 Ethical action and social responsibility 0.25
6 Communicates effectively 1.0
7 International perspectives 0.0
Total 4.5
 

 
The Assignment
Your assignment is to plan out a new system for a small enterprise that is planning on using virtualization to improve their resource utilization.  For this assignment you are to imagine that you are the administrator in charge of designing and configuring a virtual infrastructure in your company’s production environment.  Note that you may not need/want to virtualise everything in your company.  The decisions on what should be virtual are part of the design. Details of the specific requirements are provided below. You will design the VMware and network configuration for a company system, specifying the following:
Virtual switches
Ports and port groups
Port group policies
Physical connections
Host Configurations
Server Hosting
VM Configuration
VCenter Configuration
** note 1. that you are not to go to town picking networking switches and configurations of them.  (I leave that for Grant) I am happy if you give some model suggestions, prices and features that they require.
** note 2. that you don’t need to worry about the internet components of the system (CDN’s for example).  You are simply making sure the end points within your company network are supported. 
** note 3. some of you might think that some of the components should be hosted completely on the internet (cloud services).   The company distrusts hosting itself on the net so the CTO has decreed that no additional services may be cloud hosted.  You may make an argument that some should, but we need some meat for the rest of your assignment.
 
The Context
For this assignment imagine you are going to virtualise a chain of game shops.  This game chain has 5 stores spread across three cities (Hobart, Adelaide and Darwin).  In addition they have a warehouse/office for a total of 6 physical sites.  These physical sites are connected together over a 1G network connection which is reliable and robust and will not be replaced as part of this project.   
The main site hosts the following physical servers.
1 x Primary Web Server (Server LAMP, i7,8Gb,1TB) (acts as the company website) 
1 x Backup Web Server (Server LAMP, i7,8Gb,1TB) (acts as the company website) which is mirrored from the first machine incase of an outage.  Hacky installation as a reaction to outages of the primary server.  Essentially someone plugs the network cable over to the backup when there is an outage.  (ughhh terrible)
1 x Email Server Exchange (Server Win10, i7, 32Gb,8TB)
1 x SharePoint Server for documents (Server Win10, i7, 32Gb,1TB)
1 x Transaction Server (Server LAMP, i7,8Gb,1TB)  (does credit card transactions + store transactions)
1 x Customer Server (Server LAMP, i7, 12GB, 1TB) (stores the customer records, number of loyalty points etc..)
5 x PCs 
Each of the Store locations have 
2 x Cash Register Computers
1 x Office PC
You can assume that the WAN connection is sufficient for needs.  The business has one office and five stores with 25 employees.  Total salary budget for the company is $1.25 million with a total turnover of $4 million based on game, plastic junk and voucher sales.  
The business wants to continue to host their servers but they have had several physical server outages which has led to significant loses as they essentially had to close down until a new server is installed and started.  They are very concerned that they move from outage to outage burning good will with their customers, they are also running a lot of servers that need constant maintenance.  
Your job is to design the system to bring resilience into the system whilst reducing/rationalizing the number of servers running in their back room.  Some form of storage should be considered for integration into any solution you have.  You will need to examine what is possible to achieve resilient VMware system yet keep the price down.
Things to consider and justify in your designNumber of physical switches/routers
Consolidation of servers
High availability?  Is it possible how would it be implemented? 
Fault Tolerance?  Is it possible how would it be implemented?  
Thin clients?   
Costs.  Total cost, Other options?
Number of Hosts, CPUs and Memory on hosts
Network layout (teaming, vlans, security etc.)
Should a computer even be virtualised? 
The price tag relative to the means of the company. 
You are to propose a new system and explain how you would configure it using VMware.   You are also to do a compare VMware to competing products and give an overview of the relative merits of each product in this context.
 
What is RequiredYou are to hand up a single document with the following sections.
Executive Summary

• Summary of existing system with opportunities for improvement
• Outline of hardware/software/license requirements along with costs (in the form of a budget).
• Outline of configuration of the system.
• Sketches of the infrastructure of the platform.  (At least a physical, logical and rack diagram)
• Instructions for configuration.  Very specific instructions that step you through the setup and configuration of the required features.  Feel free to screenshot steps where possible rather than write them out in detail.  You may not have access to some of the software you are configuring.  In that case use existing instructions and customize it for your situation. PLEASE NOTE: you do not need to talk about configuration/installation of servers as they already exist.   You simply need to give instructions on how to virtualize them.  In other words, you should be able to hand this document to a network/VMware engineer and they would be able to build the entire system without having to look anything upComparison of relevant features, price of competing products. (E.g. other virtualisation offerings)
• Appendix containing any outlines for hardware, licenses etc...
•  
• The Target Audience for This Report Are
• CTO/CEO to decide to proceed with the plan.  With no real understanding of virtualisation.
• Purchasing/Finance for ordering but don't understand technology.
• Technicians to implement the design.  Who understand virtualisation and VMware but needs a guide to install.Write your report accordinglyMarking Criteria
• Well-reasoned outline of the hardware and software requirements of the system.  Including budgets and alternatives if appropriate.
• Specific list of servers that are required and how they will be configuredSpecific design of network both virtual and physical.
• Examination of at least 3 other products that could be used as an alternative with a comparison.
• Easy to follow instructions for configuring the VMWare Infrastructure (don’t concern yourself with any guest configuration except network configuration).
• Professional presentation.
• Executive Summary at the Start of Document.
•  
• There are bound to be questions.   Can you please post them on the discussion board so that everyone has access to the same information?
• How long should this be?   The assignment should be as long as it needs to present the required information.  The long bit will be the step by step instructions.  Other sections might consist of a few pages each.
•  
• Feedback Previously Given
• This is the feedback I always end up giving in this assignment.  I put it hear in the hope that I don’t have to write it anymore 
• Executive summary should be enough information that a manager who makes decisions can read it and make a quick decision.  It needs the stuff that someone is spending the money needs to make the decision.   Things like the actual $costs, the benefits, risks and impact of change. 
• The selection of equipment: 1.  This is a company! using junky/consumer computer stores will give you no support and are unacceptable.   E.G. Using MSY to buy a storage solution/computer is an extremely bad idea.   A company wants support for its infrastructure.   
• The selection of equipment: 2.  Keep in mind how much stuff is costing versus the size of the company.  If you propose a project that costs 50% of the value of a company, it’s not going to happen.  
• The selection of equipment: 3.  Avoid multivendor problems.  E.g. if you can don’t buy Dell for the servers and HP for the networks.  If you have issues, they will blame each other.  However, if there is a good reason then you will.
• The selection of equipment: 4.  SAN != NAS.  They are not the same thing.  Read up on it before making choices.
• The selection of equipment: 5.  Equipment X is no longer available to purchase.
• The selection of equipment: 6.  Equipment X is not complete.  E.g. you can’t buy m630’s without a blade enclosure.  (Be careful to understand what you are recommending).
• Design of infrastructure.  Should have a physical design (e.g. how the real hardware is laid out) + a hybrid/virtual layout (how the physical and virtual interacts).   Should also have a rack layout if required.
• Setup Instructions:  Should reflect the design.
• Design of Infrastructure:  Proposed equipment list to buy should match proposed design to build.
• Diagrams should match the proposal.
• Entire document is unprofessional:  Document is clearly knocked up at the last minute with very little thought of what is happening.  
• Your selections of equipment and design should be justified.  E.g. if you pick A over B then mention why.  The odder your selection the more justification is necessary.

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