Roles and Responsibilities

The following sections detail the various roles and responsibilities of IT personnel and support services typically included in the WCPA guide.

Internet Engineering

Internet Engineering is the group responsible for operating the company's Internet access. In a large company, it is typical to have multiple, geographically separate routes from internal networks to the Internet, both for load sharing and reliability. Internet Engineering is responsible for the principal external servers in the "demilitarized zone" or DMZ. The DMZ is that portion of the network that sits behind the first firewall but outside of the main internal networks, as shown in Figure 13-1.

Figure 13-1. Sample Internet Firewall and DMZ Network

Typical responsibilities of Internet Engineering include:

Determining requirements for Internet connectivity
Contracting for ISP (Internet Service Provider) services
Installing and maintaining external web, ftp, and e-mail servers
Installing and maintaining external DNS and other directory servers
Monitoring ISP performance and service level agreements

Security Engineering

Security is a specialized enough topic that it is called out separately in the WCPA. Typical responsibilities of Security Engineering include:

Designing and maintaining firewall complex, possibly in conjunction with Internet Engineering
Working with Internet Engineering to assure security of all external servers
Working with Network Engineering to assure security of all internal networks
Working with WebTone engineering to provide secure access through the firewall
Designing and implementing methods for remote user authentication and data encryption

Network Engineering

Typical responsibilities of Network Engineering include:

Determining internal networking requirements, both for WANs and LANs
Contracting with Telcos for WAN services
Installing and maintaining all WAN and LAN routers, switches, and hubs
Determining impact of new applications on the network

WebTone Engineering

Typical responsibilities of WebTone Engineering include:

Working with Internet engineering to hand off incoming and outgoing web, ftp, and e-mail traffic
Installing and maintaining internal DNS and other directory services
Providing internal web server hosting
Designing and maintaining a network of internal proxy cache servers at strategic points on the corporate Intranet

Technical Support

Typical responsibilities of Technical Support include:

Determining physical location of all server equipment
Installing network connections and power
Installing hardware, including third party equipment
Conducting preventive maintenance diagnostics on all equipment
Partitioning the disks during OS installation
Configuring operating system specific parameters
Applying any operating system patches required
Assisting database administration with DBMS installations
Installing any unbundled software products, such as tape management, disk mirroring, etc.
Installing all required data center utilities
Configuring and maintaining system security
Monitoring system performance and capacity (CPU, memory, disk, network)
Managing backup tape integrity and storage
Providing on-call support, 7x24, or as specified
Performing disaster recovery drills
Establishing end-of-life plans to deactivate servers and applications
Providing online availability statistics
Providing system tuning for peak performance
Performing capacity planning
Establishing network connections to LAN and WAN, including ISP (Internet Service Provider) connections
Providing and maintaining network databases such as DNS, LDAP, NIS, NFS, Primary Domain Controller (NT), Backup Domain Controller (NT)
Performing security audits ; monitoring security access
Establishing user accounts and system (root) accounts
Monitoring all daily processing
Starting/restarting production jobs and applications
Scheduling all online and batch processing
Evaluating, developing, and implementing utilities and tools to support servers and applications in the production environment

Hardware Support

Typical responsibilities of Hardware Support include:

Supporting and resolving all hardware problems
Handling all preventive maintenance within the data center for mission-critical servers

Applications Support

Typical responsibilities of Applications Support include:

Providing second-level application support as required
Working with technical support and database administration to resolve complex application problems