Assignment : Propose an IT Infrastructure Design Solution for iTech Company

Rationale

Practical exercises assess students' ability to apply theoretical learning to practical, real world situations. This is Individual assignment that each student must design and configure an IT infrastructure solution for a small organization.

A hard copy report of approximately 2500 must be provided to present your proposed ideas.

The report must satisfy the following specific criteria:

1. Demonstrate ability to plan, locate information using the Internet, organisations and publications and analyse this information.

2. Demonstrate knowledge of IT Infrastructure and design a network using building block approach.

3. Simulate and configure network devices as one step towards network implementation and testing.

4. Demonstrate the ability to determine cloud base services that suit enterprise requirements.

Case Study

A software development company, iTech has a 900-computer network. The company is located in three adjacent five-story buildings in an office park, with about 300 computers in each building.

The LAN in each building are similar, but one building- data centre building (DCB) has data centre on the second floor. The data centre provides web and email services to the enterprise employee. In addition, it provides dynamic IP assign, share file and DNS services.

The current network is poorly designed for its current needs and must be completely replaced. The head officer of the IT department wants to get two design proposal of the new network. The first design considers the dedicated server techniques by hosting all the iTech servers within its buildings. While the Cloud hosting to be considered in the second design. Develop a logical design for the DCB of this enterprise campus.

Your design must demonstrate a detail logical design based on three-layers hierarchal model. The design should include the set of required servers, network devices, and connection with justification and supported diagrams. You have to make some assumptions with the required justifications for
your design.

Task Specifications

Prepare a report to propose a network design for the iTech company. Use the building-block approach to design the network for the company. Your design proposal should consider the followings:

I. Using dedicated server design

1. Developing logical network design that includes the geographical scope of the network and a categorization of current and future network needs of the various network segments, users, and applications.

2. Develop a detail logical design based on three-layers hierarchal model. The design should include the set of required network devices and servers, with the justification.

3. Specify the IP addresses, subnet masks to the various networks and control the process by which IP addresses are assigned to individual clients and servers.

4. Use network simulator (Cisco Packet Tracer) to simulate part of the DCB network.

The simulation scenario should include the access layer devices, web server, DHCP, and DNS. Your scenario should demonstrate how the client computers dynamically obtained IP network configuration including IP, DNS, and default gateway addresses. In addition, you have to demonstrate how the client accessing the web server.

II. Using Cloud hosting design:

Propose two organizations that provides Cloud services for hosting the DCB servers. Justify your answer by explaining the level of services each company provides that suit the iTech requirements.

You have to make some assumptions with the required justifications for your design.

Report Layout

The proposal report should be organised using the following headings and guidelines:

1. A Cover Title Page

2. Introduction

a. Should clearly define the aims and objectives of the project in the report

b. Explain what contents will be covered in the report

c. Organization description.

3. Discussion on IT infrastructure components required.

4. The three-layers hierarchal model

a. Introduction

b. Analyse the current and future iTech IT Infrastructure requirements.

c. Geographical scope of the network.

d. Discussion on the possibility of scaling of the iTech network.

5. Dedicated server design proposal

a. Identify all the services and servers required.

b. Propose logical design supported with diagrams and justification.

c. List of IP addresses and network mask for all the networks.

6. Cloud based design proposal

a. Identification of two cloud service organization with justification

b. List of services the organization provides that suit the iTech network design requirements.

7. Network simulation.

a. Access layer diagram including web, DHCP, and DNS servers.

b. DHCP configuration.

c. DNS and web servers configurations.

d. Demonstration and explanation how the clients dynamically obtain network configuration and accessing web server.

8. Conclusions and Recommendations

9. References