IT Infrastructure Assessment

This assignment consists of six tasks related to Milton Mechanical's IT infrastructure, assessing whether their current strategy meets their needs and aspirations. The tasks include evaluating their IT strategy, technical information, wireless networks, network traffic, data management, and disaster recovery. A consultant has suggested adopting a subnetting scheme, but the company is not impressed. The assignment also involves recommending a suitable PC for a virtual desktop environment, modeling a 802.11n wireless router's performance, analyzing the subnetting policy, proposing an alternative design for their logical topological design, providing support for over 600 wireless devices, and discussing the pros and cons of a cloud-based approach for data storage, virtual desktops, and backup.

IT infrastructure
Appendix: Assignments
Introduction
This assignments consists of six tasks related to a single scenario. The tasks are intended
to assess whether you have met the minimum acceptable level for each of the learning
outcomes associated with this module
1. Critically evaluate an enterprises IT strategy to assess whether it meets the
enterprises current needs and aspirations
2. Critically evaluate an enterprise’s technical information to assess equipment
suitability
3. Critically evaluate wireless networks to assess their suitability to meet the
needs of the enterprise
4. Capture and analyse network traffic to assess the performance of the
network.
5. Evaluate strategies for data management, storage and disaster recovery
6. Critically evaluate own and other’s designs.
The grading criteria at the end of the assignment indicate how the learning outcomes
relate to the tasks.
Scenario
Milton Mechanical have a large office, not surprisingly, in Milton, Cambridge.. It has
the following network architecture. Note that although a single 24 port 2960 is shown
in each department they are actually 6 stacked 24 port switches giving 144 ports for
each department. They have brought in a consultant to advise them on their IT
infrastructure to try to improve its performance. After spending a lot of money on the
consultant the suggestion was that all that is necessary is to adopt the subnetting
scheme given below. The company are not impressed.

There are 130 end user devices in the Marketting department 98 in support and 55 in
Administration. There is a large suite (around 100m x 50m) that is used for
demonstrations and typically will have a requirement of 30 wireless devices. There is
a plan to open this space up as a conference centre in which case it will require to
cope with a potential 120 devices. The IT manager is however concerned that the
access point would not be able to cope with that number of connected devices.
As part of the overall strategy the Network Manager is considering replacing all the
existing PCs (which are getting towards end of life anyway) and servers and using a
cloud based solution. What he has in mind is to use third party servers accessible
from anywhere through the internet. All data storage will be off site. He is also
considering using virtual PCs so that all the processing is also done off site so that
the machines on the desktop are only used for entering data, interacting with the
applications and displaying the output.
General notes
The reports requested below are intended for presentation at board meetings so high
quality is expected. There is a word limit as the board members are busy people and
do not like having to wade through more words than are necessary. It will therefor be
necessary to make good use of appendices (which do not contribute towards the
word count) to provide supporting evidence for the claims made in the main body of
the report. It is important that you identify the core points and state them clearly and
concisely in your report. If the reader wants to verify the evidence used to support the
points made in the report then this should be available in the appendix.
Allied to this is the importance of providing references for claims made. It is not
enough just to have a reference list at the end of the report. it is also essential to use
Harvard standard citations in the text where the reference is used.
Your submissions need to be comb bound.
Grading criteria are provided to assist you identify the standards you need to reach.

Assignment 1 1500 words (30%)
Task A1
Write a 500 word report that briefly explains the benefits and issues related to moving
to a virtual PC desktop, identify the characteristics of a suitable PC to use in such an
environment and recommend a specific computer with supporting justification.
Task A2
Use a software modelling tool such as Riverbed’s Modeller Academic Edition to
determine how well a 802.11n wireless router will cope with the proposed loading to
be placed upon it. It will be used predominantly for accessing web sites, applications
and the cloud based data. It is not intended for the laptops to be virtualised. Make
clear the limitations the application you used for attempting to model this scenario.
As only the wireless part of the topology is of interest just model the wireless access
point and wireless devices along with a wired server. When selecting devices choose
the fixed versions. The application should have a heavy email load with medium web
traffic and lighter ftp traffic. Choose these values carefully so that there is at least 30
minutes simulated time when the model is run. Create scenarios with 12, 30, 80 and
120 devices in them to be able to evaluate the affects of the increase in traffic.
Your report should outline the application set up used and an analysis of the delay
and throughput to determine whether the router is likely to be able to cope with the
peak traffic.
Task A3
Provide a detailed analysis of the Subnetting policy highlighting all the errors and
weaknesses and suggest possible fixes.
Assignment 2 3500 words (70%)
Task B1
Write a report that briefly indicates the weaknesses in the proposed logical
topological design and propose a suitable alternative design. The report should not
exceed 1000 words and should include a diagram of the proposed new design. This
can be done using packet tracer or any other diagramming tool but standard Cisco
symbols should be used. The design should be for the case where the company are
hosting their own servers; not a cloud based solution.
Task B2
The IT Manager is particularly interested in a recommendation for providing proper
support for the wireless devices throughout the organisation (not just the
demonstration area). Make use of Cisco material to identify the recommended way of
supporting over 600 wireless devices in a single site. Specific recommendations for
devices to support the wireless requirements are required. Write a report not
exceeding 1000 words that explains how wireless networks in large organisations
should be implemented, identify the type of devices available to implement such
networks and recommend specific devices for use by the company
Task B3
Write a report of no more than 1500 words discussing the pros and cons of a cloud-
based approach for all the company’s data storage requirements, virtual desktop and
backup.