ICTNWK559 - Install an Enterprise Virtual Computing Environment

Assignment Task

Case Study

Albert & Allen Logistics (AA) is a private business that provides passenger transport and freight services for Australian-wide clients and businesses. Various upgrades to the organisation’s network were installed on servers that were purchased in 2016 and before, so their warranties are no longer valid. Some servers are prone to unexplained failures requiring additional time and effort for maintenance.

Management is requesting proposals for the improvement and expansion of its technology infrastructure. The intention of this RFP (Request for Proposal) is to invite vendors to submit a plan to supply a server virtualisation solution which will include hardware, software, installation, and documentation. The scope of this RFP will cover the improvement and expansion of the existing server infrastructure and will include servers, network storage, and reconfiguration of the current network.

AA has 12 physical servers from which IT services are provided to staff and clients. They use a range of operating systems including Linux and Windows Server 2012 R2/2016. Critical data is backed up to network attached storage (NAS) devices. One of the primary goals for this project is to improve the infrastructure by reusing existing hardware where possible, combined with new hardware and using cost effective solutions which would provide geographically separated data redundancy through high-speed network connectivity. The solution that you provide should support consolidation, scalability, and disaster recovery, continued centralised management and high availability.

Shawn Long, the organisation’s director of IT, said that they had had a server crash and spent 24 hours rebuilding the system and repairing the network. That experience prompted Shawn to re-evaluate the availability of email, databases, user information and other business workloads in the organisation. The company currently has 510 employees at the central office (including the ten IT staff). He has also proposed that additional redundancy and load balancing measures should be introduced to the AA network to ensure greater high availability of network services. Therefore, in addition to the primary VM hosts, two additional VM hosts will replicate the primary VM hosts in real time using a hot standby setup.

All servers are located in their own climate controlled central data centre which also contains the local and wide area network switch and NBN modems. The network room switch then connects via fibre-optic cable to 1Gb managed network switches located in the management (10 computers), administration (15 computers), call centre (70 computers), logistics (150 computers and devices), and maintenance (10 computers) departments that are located in different parts of the organisations complex. Desktop computers are running either Microsoft Windows 8.1 to 11 Pro.

The organisation is considering using server virtualisation by purchasing new servers, installing hypervisors on them, then building new virtual servers and migrating data from physical servers to the virtual environment as the obsolete servers are replaced. The organisation has purchased three Dell PowerEdge R750 servers with the following configuration:

• 2 x Intel 3.2Gb CPU
• 32GB RAM
• PERC H755 RAID controller
• 2 x 1.2TB SAS HDD – configured for RAID 1
• 4 x 1.2TB SAS HDD – configured for RAID 10
• 1 x 1.2TB SAS HDD as a universal hot spare
• DVD+/-RW
• Quad port 10GbE Base-T network adapter
• Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard
• 5-year ProSupport Plus 4-hour critical response

The organisation also promised to purchase one more server of the same or higher specifications if required by the design.

The existing physical servers consist of:

• Seven servers running various Windows Server operating systems which provide the following server functions:
• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
• File and print servers
• Email server
• Application servers
• Monitoring services
• Three Linux based servers for web services, security, and network services administration, including:
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) using dhcpd
• Domain Name System (DNS) using BIND
• Apache web server using httpd
• Samba file server
• Two other Linux/BSD servers provide firewall and routing services.

PART

1. Virtualisation Evaluation

Your Role

The Albert & Allen Logistics Information Technology team has requested the services of Uptown IT due to the depth of knowledge and experience your organisation has. As a senior IT consultant with Uptown IT, management has requested that you take a lead role in helping the client meet their goals.

For this first part of the assessment task, you will create a report that will cover evaluating virtualisation platforms, case study recommendation, Australian law, and guidelines in regard to sustainable ICT environments, and migration tools.

You will create a report with a cover page titled “Evaluating Virtualisation Platforms”, the cover page to also include your name, student ID, and the date of completion. The report must follow the Uptown IT policies and save the document as 

Evaluating Virtualisation Platforms

The first part of the report is to evaluate a range of virtualisation platforms. Your evaluation should:

1. Explain the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors.

2. Give two examples of each type of hypervisors that are suitable for small and medium size companies.

Sustainable Guidelines

Research and document Australian government and industry guidelines in relation to sustainable ICT practices.

• What technologies and processes are available to support sustainable practice?
• What industry technology and processes are designed into your new network to produce an efficient and reliable sustainable ICT environment?
• Provide a list of sources used, and URL links where applicable

Client Approval

Your first submission of the document will be the discussion and submission to the client (teacher) to obtain approval for plans with any recommendations. Your document on the last page will include:

• A clear statement of review and approval
• Signature area that is signed and dated

2. Planning

For this second part of the assessment, you will develop a document that covers the client requirements and their organisation.

You will create a document titled “Planning the Infrastructure”, the document must follow the Uptown IT policies and saved as.

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