Lab Question

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In this exercise, you will be challenged to use your knowledge and creativity to provide a solution that would work in a real-world scenario. You will be the planner and architect of a new server-based computing environment using Windows 2000 Advanced Server and MetaFrame XP. Your job is to evaluate the following information and build a system that will support the environment.

XYZ Company is made up of three divisions, Sales, Production, and Shipping. All three divisions are physically located in the same building, but each division's departments are in separate offices. There is an existing Ethernet LAN, Windows 2000 Advanced Server domain controller, two backup servers, and a RAS server.

The Sales division has two departments: Sales and Support. The Sales staff carry laptops and use a database of the company's products. Users in the Support area will typically have several applications open at once, including Outlook, Access, and NetMeeting.

Production has three departments: Clerical, Engineering, and Accounting. The clerical employees use Microsoft Office and Outlook, but seldom have more than two applications open at one time. The Engineering staff, meanwhile, use complex programs that tax system resources in addition to using Outlook and MS Office. Accounting employees have several proprietary programs, some of which are older, 16-bit DOS programs and may have several applications open at once, including Outlook and NetMeeting.

The Shipping division has two departments: Clerical and Docking. The clerical employees use the same programs as the clerical employees in the Engineering department, while the dock workers use a specialized program that employs touch-screens. Table 2-5 shows the divisions, departments, and number of users.

Table 2-5: Divisions, Departments, and Applications

Division	Department	Number of Users	Applications
Sales	Traveling Sales Staff	25	Database, Outlook, MS Word
	Support Staff	10	Outlook, Collaboration tools
Production	Clerical	10	MS Office, Outlook
	Engineering	15	Complex engineering programs, Office, Outlook
	Accounting	12	Proprietary DOS apps, MS Office, Outlook
Shipping	Clerical	5	MS Office, Outlook
	Docking	15	Specialized shipping applications

Using the preceding information, design an environment that will allow for optimal performance and availability.

Answers

 

Looking at the information just shown, you'll notice there are seven departments and 92 employees. All three divisions are physically located in the same building and the Windows 2000 Advanced Server domain controller, two backup domain controllers, and RAS server are already up and running on an Ethernet LAN. With this in place, our focus is primarily on the MetaFrame XP servers and the clients.

First, let's look at the users and the programs they typically run and define them as either Typical or Power Users. Table 2-6 shows the users divided into Typical and Power User categories.

Table 2-6: Typical and Power Users

Departmentýs)	Number of Users	Classification
Clerical	15	Typical Users
Engineering	15	Power Users
Docking	15	Typical Users
Sales	25	Power Users
Support	10	Power Users
Accounting	12	Power Users

That gives us a total of 30 Typical Users and 62 Power Users. In addition to the minimum server resources required by the operating system and MetaFrame XP, we will add in 4MB of RAM for each Typical User and 8MB of RAM for each Power User. We'll also figure in 100MB of disk space for each user. Table 2-7 shows what will be needed at this point.

Table 2-7: Resources Consumed

Component	RAM	Disk Space
Windows 2000 Adv. Server	256MB	2GB/1GB free
MetaFrame XP with IMA and Management Console	128MB	100MB
Power Users	496MB	6.2GB
Typical Users	120MB	3GB
Total	1GB	11.3GB

Without knowing what resources and disk space the applications will require, we'll have to use an educated guess. I'd recommend at least another 1GB of RAM and at least four 9GB drives on a RAID controller. This should be sufficient for the applications and swapfile. As for the processor, we need at least a PIII, 133MHz for Windows 2000 Advanced Server, but we should check the software to find out what its minimum requirements are. Most will require at least a 200MHz processor. My recommendation would be for a 500MHz, dual-processor machine. A server with 2GB RAM, 36GB of disk space, and dual 500MHz processors should be able to support XYZ's environment. However, since we want to build in high availability, we'll add three more servers and configure them in a server farm, then load balance the users between the four. For the Accounting users, I'd add a fifth server to run the older DOS programs, so they will not impact all users. And for redundancy, a sixth server to act as a hot spare with all the applications installed. Each server, in addition to its processor, RAM, and hard disks, will have redundant, hot-swappable power supplies, controllers, and NICs.

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