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 report of approximately 2000 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 three-layers hierarchal model.

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

Each student has to select an organization with the following specification:

1. The organization must use information technology to implement its business operations.

2. It must have a website to improve the organization marketing and customer satisfaction through better services. The organization domain name is: www. compName.org.au

3. Email services for each staff member.

4. More than one campus at different locations.

5. Wireless network services within the organization campuses.

6. Assume the organization has more than 3000 computers at each campus connected in a network and have access to the Internet.

7. Backup and file share servers for regularly backup staff important documents and share files between staff, respectively.
Assume the head officer of the IT department wants to analyse current network design and propose the hosting of some network services using virtualization and Cloud.

Analyse the current network by develop a logical diagram. Your diagram must base on three-layers hierarchal model. The diagram should include the set of required servers, network devices, and connections with justification. You may have to make some assumptions with the required justifications.

Task Specifications

Prepare a report to propose a network design for the selected organization. Your report should consider the followings:

I. Analysis and propose the organization IT infrastructure by:

1. Developing logical network diagram that includes the geographical scope of the network explaining the network backbone devices and a categorization various network segments, users, and applications.

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

3. Based on your logical diagram, discuss the possibility of scaling the current network for future services.

4. 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.

5. Use network simulator (Cisco Packet Tracer) to simulate part of the 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. Assume the IT department of the selected organization wants to adapted virtualization and Cloud computed for hosting some of the organization application servers.

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

2. Outline the techniques of using service virtualisation in supporting and implementing Cloud platforms.

3. Demonstrate how the virilization and Cloud computing can support the dynamic scaling of the selected organization applications.

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.
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 IT Infrastructure requirements.
c. Geographical diagram of the network.
d. Discussion on the possibility of scaling the organization network.
e. Identify all the services and servers required.
f. Propose a logical network diagram supported with justification.
g. List of IP addresses and network mask for all the networks.

5. Cloud based design proposal
a. Identification of two cloud service organization with justification
b. List of services the organization provides that suit the network design requirements.
c. Dynamic applications scaling using virtualization and Cloud.

6. Network simulation.
a. Access layer diagram including web, DHCP, and DNS servers.
b. DHCP configuration.
c. DNS and web server's configurations.
d. Demonstration and explanation how the clients dynamically obtain network configuration and accessing web server with the domain

7. Conclusions and Recommendations

8. References