Task

Regional Gardens Ltd is a company that runs a number of related gardening enterprises. It has a large display garden that it opens for public inspection a number of times a year. These enterprises include the Regional Gardens Nursery which sells plants and garden supplies to the public, and Regional Garden Planners which provides garden advice, design and consultancy services.

Regional Gardens Ltd has a small data centre at its main site in Bathurst where the company's servers and data storage is located. The company has the following server infrastructure:

2 x Active Directory domain controllers on Windows Server 2008 R2, (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 140GB HDD);

3 x SQL Server 2003 database servers on Windows Server 2003 (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-5 array); 1

1 x Exchange 2007 email server on Windows Server 2008 R2 (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

4 x Windows Server 2003 File and Print servers (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

2 x Red Hat Enterprise 5 Linux servers running Apache and TomCat (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 16GB RAM, 140GB HDD).

This infrastructure has not been updated for some time and the Regional Gardens Board is concerned that a full upgrade may now cost them more than it is worth. The Board is now considering moving some, or all, of their current infrastructure into the Cloud. The Board sees this as a strategic move to future-proof the company.

Regional Gardens has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 70 garden design, horticultural and support staff that work on different projects for clients in New South Wales. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them.

Your task is to:

Prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the Regional Gardens board. Your briefing should:

Explain the main concepts of Cloud Computing and why you think that a move to the Cloud could be good for Regional Gardens;

Explain some of the Cloud Architectures that you think would be useful for Regional Gardens to use as part of their Cloud infrastructure. This explanation should also briefly discuss how the current Regional Gardens infrastructure could be replicated or replaced in a Cloud deployment.

Each slide in the briefing must also include speaking notes in the notes section to explain the slide, and all images used in the briefing should be referenced.

One of Regional Gardens's first undertakings is to provide all their staff with the ability to access office automation, such as email, word processing and spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed on a customer's site in the field.

The Regional Gardens board is very concerned to learn about the critical issues, other than cost, that may affect the supply of Cloud based office automation to their staff. You will need to prepare a report on the best way to provide office automation for Regional Gardens. Your report should:

Provide Regional Gardens with TWO different approaches to providing office automation to their staff;

Outline the major benefits and issues with each approach;

Provide a summary of your advice to this company along with your recommendation about which option to choose. Your report should be no longer than 2 pages.

Regional Gardens has a single data centre in Bathurst which contains the following infrastructure:

2 x Active Directory domain controllers on Windows Server 2008 R2, (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 140GB HDD);

3 x SQL Server 2003 database servers on Windows Server 2003 (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-5 array);

1 x Exchange 2007 email server on Windows Server 2008 R2 (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

4 x Windows Server 2003 File and Print servers (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

2 x Red Hat Enterprise 5 Linux servers running Apache and TomCat (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 16GB RAM, 140GB HDD).

Regional Gardens is considering initially moving its Web infrastructure to a public Cloud, but they are unsure of whether they should migrate to an IaaS or PaaS solution. You are to write a report for the Regional Gardens board that:

Describes the difference between infrastructure provided using an IaaS provider and a platform provided by a PaaS provider in a public Cloud.

You will need to discuss the critical differences, issues and factors, other than cost, that Regional Gardens will have to consider in choosing to migrate their existing Web infrastructure to either an IaaS or a PaaS service provider. Your report should take no more than two pages. (30 marks)

Regional Gardens is also considering whether to use PaaS or SaaS to provide services to its employees. Regional Gardens has deployed Microsoft SharePoint 2010 from its data centre as a collaboration and document management tool for its 70 staff.

The SharePoint 2010 instance has been extensively customised to suit Regional Gardens needs and also runs Project Central, their Project Management tool as a separate application from within SharePoint.

All employees have the Microsoft Office 2010 suite of office automation products installed on their respective desktops or laptops. Regional Gardens would like to move its SharePoint 2010 instance to the cloud to make it more accessible, particularly to its users working at customer's sites. Regional Gardens want you to report on:

What are the major differences between the models IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?

Recommend the model that you consider most appropriate for this service and discuss why this model is the most appropriate for the SharePoint service.

What are the most likely problems that Regional Gardens will encounter with the model that you recommend? How would you advise Regional Gardens to deal with these issues?

Your report for this question should be no more than 3 pages.