Case Study

You should give yourself 20 minutes to review this testlet, review the diagram, and complete the questions.

Background

Insane Systems builds custom computers for their customers. They specialize in building cases that are unique and support the latest in hardware technology. They started off as a small company that provided this service to gamers who would take their cases to LAN parties to show off. Due to the fact that their systems were considered some of the most stable gaming platforms and because they provided an impressive design that gamers could show off, they started to become popular. Insane Systems started mass manufacturing some of their more popular designs and began selling stand-alone cases along with their fully configured systems. As space at the company became a premium, the office was moved from the manufacturing facility. This allowed the company to add to the amount of space that was used for the mass production line.

Existing Environment

Over the past few months, Insane Systems has been developing plans to expand their company. They have identified San Jose, California, Atlanta, Georgia, and New York City as the locations with their highest customer base. The current Chicago location will remain the corporate headquarters, but they are opening branches in New York City and San Jose. They are also in the process of acquiring a competitor s business in Atlanta. These locations will provide retail outlets as well as support. Customers will have the option of sending their systems back to the corporate office for any needed upgrades or repairs , or delivering them to one of the branch locations.

Because the company is planning on expanding, they want to make sure that the network infrastructure is in place to support their larger, distributed company. They are also concerned with the support lifetime of their current Windows NT 4.0 infrastructure. They realize they have the option of moving to a Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 infrastructure and are considering moving to Windows Server 2003 and Active Directory for two reasons: the expected support lifetime is greater than Windows 2000, and they are a technology firm that is not afraid of staying ahead of the technology curve.

Interviews

Your company has been hired to design an Active Directory infrastructure and the network infrastructure to support it. During the interview process with some of the key stakeholders you gathered the following information:

CEO     Currently we have a single location with all of our processes local. As we grow, we would like to keep all of the administration here in Chicago. Because the new branches are primarily retail and support offices, we will not need to have a large staff in those locations.

CIO     Most of the infrastructure that we support is located here at the corporate office. We do support some key servers at the manufacturing location. We support these servers from our main office. Because the servers are nearby, if there is a problem, we can usually be on site within half an hour .

The new branches are going to be another issue altogether. We would like to retain the same level of administrative control over the servers in the new locations that we employ currently. Due to the geographic limitations, we may need to have some support staff at those locations. Currently, the plan is to hire staff at those locations that can provide the support for the customers, but also have an understanding of the business systems we need to put into place.

Manager of Information Technology     We have grown very quickly over the past three years and our current technologies have kept up with that growth. However, we don t think the current infrastructure is ready for the amount of growth that we are expecting within the following year. We are not afraid of moving to the latest technology, but we want to make sure that the design is stable and makes sense for us, especially if we will continue growing in the upcoming months.

Most of our processes are located here at this office, and we would like to keep it that way. We know that there will be servers that will need to be located at the remote offices, but we would like to be able to provide most of the support from this location. Remote administration tools will need to be included within the design so that we can keep our administrative costs at a minimum.

Currently we have most of our servers located at the main office, and all are located on their own high-speed backbone. We do have a server at the manufacturing site that allows the staff there to have e-mail as well as plans and orders in case we lose connectivity between the offices. This server is running Microsoft Exchange Server. Several times during the day, we replicate the public folder information to this system so that they are always up to date and do not have to dial up to the main office.

The systems at the main office are all supported by our staff of four administrators. All of the administrators are cross-trained on Windows NT 4, Exchange Server, SQL Server, our accounting software, and each of our file and print servers. We currently have five Windows NT 4 servers in place, one Exchange server at both locations, one SQL server at the main office, one server running our accounting package that interfaces with the SQL server, and one file and print server that is used by both locations. The Exchange server at the manufacturing location doubles as a print server also.

Because all of the client machines are running Windows NT 4 Workstation, we do not have to worry about supporting different operating systems. We would like to maintain that same easy administration with the upcoming system. We would like to provide the same types of services at the remote locations that we provide at the home office, although accounting will remain at the home office and will not be spread out to all of the locations.

Table

Use the following table as a resource to answer the questions.

Resources	Administrative Groups
Exchange Server ”Home Office	Headquarters Administrators
Exchange Server ”Manufacturing Office	San Jose Support Staff
Exchange Server ”San Jose Office	New York Support Staff
Exchange Server ”Atlanta Office	Atlanta Support Staff
Exchange Server ”New York Office
SQL Server ”Home Office
SQL Server ”Manufacturing Office
SQL Server ”San Jose Office
SQL Server ”Atlanta Office
SQL Server ”New York Office
Accounting Server ”Home Office
Accounting Server ”Manufacturing Office
Accounting Server ”San Jose Office
Accounting Server ”Atlanta Office
Accounting Server ”New York Office
File and Print Server ”Home Office
File and Print Server ”Manufacturing Office
File and Print Server ”San Jose Office
File and Print Server ”Atlanta Office
File and Print Server ”New York Office