Comprehensive IT Infrastructure Project: Xero's Sydney Branch

This project provides a comprehensive analysis of Xero's IT infrastructure, focusing on the Sydney branch. It begins with an overview of the geographical scope of the network, supported by a diagram, and then delves into the logical design diagram based on a three-layer hierarchical model. The project details the IP address and subnet mask configurations suitable for the Sydney branch, covering both clients and servers. It also explores potential cloud service providers for hosting emails and web servers, discussing the benefits of virtualization in supporting and implementing cloud platforms. Furthermore, the project examines how cloud computing can facilitate dynamic scaling of Xero's applications. The analysis includes network diagrams, IP address configurations, and discussions on cloud service providers like AWS and Azure, making it a valuable resource for understanding IT infrastructure in a cloud-based environment.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE
PROJECT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
1. Geographical scope of network with the support of diagram..................................................1
2. Logical design diagram for the Sydney branch based on three layer hierarchal model..........1
3. IP address with Subnet mask that can be used for Sydney branch for the clients and servers 2
4. Cloud service providers hoisting emails and web servers.......................................................3
5. Virtualisation in supporting and implementing cloud platforms.............................................6
6. Ways Cloud Computing can support dynamic scaling of the Xero organisation applications8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
IT Infrastructure is an organisation's entire collection of software’s, hardware’s, data
centres, networks, facilities and related equipments used to develop, monitor, operate, manage
all kind of IT services within an organisation. In this assignment IT infrastructure of Xero
Organisation has been discussed. Xero is an IT organisation that offers cloud based services to
their customers. Here, Geographical network of Xero Sydney branch has been described,
Logical network design diagram of the company will be explained in detail with its hierarchical
model, IP address and Subnet mask that the organisation will use are discussed. Other than this
the cloud service provider that the company can use are also discussed, how virtualisation
supports cloud platforms has been described and lastly, ways cloud computing can support
dynamic scaling of Xero organisation has been discussed in details.
MAIN BODY
1. Geographical scope of network with the support of diagram
Geographical network is is a network connection among computer networks where both
hardware and software are interconnected to each other in order to share data and communicate.
Because of the geographical difference among the scope of the network computer networks are
divided into different types of Geographical computer networks. There are various types of
geographical computer networks which are LAN, MAN, WAN, CAN, PAN, HAN etc. Backbone
network diagram is a diagram in which all the computer networks in the same geographical area
are interconnected with each other.
Geographical network of Xero Company consist of 240 computers distributed among
eight floors of the City centre building of Sydney. It is made up CAN (Campus area network)
and LAN (local area network). CAN network refers to all the LAN's that are connected to
together in office buildings. LAN network refers to all the all the HAN's connected together
within a small office. In Xero Company building all the computers on a floor are connected to
each other through LAN and all the LAN on each floor are connected by CAN.
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2. Logical design diagram for the Sydney branch based on three layer hierarchal model
Logical design diagram is an abstract and conceptual design where logical relationship
among different objects is defined (Pfaff and et.al., 2015). Logical network diagram is used to
describe flow of information within a network. This diagram typically shows subnet network
devices such as firewall, routers etc. In this logical design diagram of an organisation’s network
connection between all the devices is described based on the flow of information flow within the
organisation's network.
Here the Logical network diagram of Xero organisation is shown who wants to open their new
branch in building located in Sydney city centre. This building consist of eight floors and each
floor has a lobby area. Each floor consist of 30 rooms and each has five network points to which
staff members are connected. The branch has four servers including print, file, DHCP, DNS
servers. This branch of Xero Company which is to open Sydney in City Centre branch is
completely based upon three layer hierarchical model.
Logical Network diagram of Xero Company's Sydney branch.
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Illu
stration 1: Geographical scope of network

Three layer hierarchical model is described below:
Core layer: This core network layer provides high speed and are highly redundant. It forwards
services to move packets between distribution layer in various other regions of network. In this
most of the times routers and core switches are used. These core network devices manage highest
possible speed connections.
Distribution layer: It is one of the smartest layer in all the three layers of the model. In this layer
filtering and routing is managed. This layer is also known as work group layer. This layer
mostly manages all the individual branch office WAN connections.
Access Layer: In this layer End stations and server connects enterprise is connected. The
traditional forces at access layer is minimising “cost-per-port”. Organisation must make
investment for each Ethernet port. This layer is also known as desktop layer as well because this
layer mainly focusses on connecting client nodes for example work stations to the network.
3. IP address with Subnet mask that can be used for Sydney branch for the clients and servers
IP address is also known as Internet protocol address. It is numerical label that is assigned
to each and every device that is connected to the computer network (Nakamura and et.al., 2018).
It is used for two main principles which are: locating addresses and for host interface
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Illu
stration 2: Logical network Diagram

identification. Most of the IP addresses are of internet protocol version 4 which defines a 32 bit
address number but the use of internet is growing this it has changed to internet protocol version
6 which uses 128 bit address number.
Most of the times IPv4 is used and is divided into five main classes which are: Class A, Class B,
Class C, Class D and Class E. However, out of all these classes most commonly used classes
are A, B and C. All the classes provides fixed range of IP Addresses. Range of IP addresses in
each class with their supports and host are given below.
IP Class IP Address Range No. of hosts and networks each Class
provides
Class A 1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254 16.7 million hosts on each of 126
networks
Class B 128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254 65,534 host on each of 16,382 networks
Class C 192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254 245 host on each of 2 million networks
Class D 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 Reserved for multi-cast groups
Class E 240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254 Reserved for future use.
Subnet mask is a 32 bit number which is used to mask IP address as well as it helps
in dividing IP address into networks and host address. It is generally made by setting all
the network bits into 1 and host bits into all 0's.
The IP address and host address for the Xero organisation is described below
Network address bits
(24)
Subnet Extended network Host address Range
11000000
10101000
00000001
255.255.255.0 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.1 to
192.168.1.127
11000000
10101000
255.255.255.128 192.168.1.128 192.168.1129
192.168.1.255
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00000001
4. Cloud service providers hoisting emails and web servers
Cloud service providers (CPS) are organisations that offer infrastructure, network
services, business applications in the cloud (Ramachandran and Chang, 2016). These cloud
services are mostly hosted in data centres that can be easily be accessed by organisations using
that network connectivity. These cloud service providers help the organisations to use their
infrastructure in order to increase economies of scale and efficiency of the overall organisation.
Cloud service providers makes it easy for the companies to use CPS network services so that
they can serve their clients and customers in an better way with the help of shared infrastructure.
These cloud service provides provides various kinds of services to their clients such as: They
provide software service to their clients which is known as Software as a Service (SaaS), they
provide computing platform as a service so that companies can host or develop application which
is known as Platform as a Service (PaaS), they also provide computing or networking
infrastructure to the organisations which is known as infrastructure as a service. However, not all
cloud service providers provide all of these services, there are various traditional service
providers which provide applications or web hosting as well.
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There are various cloud service providers who provide these services such as Google,
Cisco, Oracle Microsoft, Amazon etc. But out of all of these service providers two of them are
most commonly used which are: Amazon Web Server (AWS) and second is Microsoft Assure.
Microsoft Assure
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service that was created by Microsoft for building,
deploying, testing as well as managing services and applications where all the services and
applications are managed by data centres of Microsoft. From the above table it is clear that that
Microsoft Azure provides Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well
as Platform as a Service (PaaS). It is supported by many programming languages, frameworks,
tools, Microsoft software’s and even by third party software’s. Initially when it was launched it
was named as “Windows Azure” but afterwards it was named as “Microsoft Azure”. The level of
services Microsoft Azure provides suits all the requirements of the Xero Organisation. It
provides more than 600 Azure services to their customers and clients but most commonly used
services are: They provides computing services, mobile services, storage services, data
management like databases, analytics, data warehousing, messaging like event hub, Media
services, Content delivery network, Developing services, Machine learning, server-less
computing, Internet of things and various other services.
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Illustration 3: List of Cloud service providers and services they provide
(Source: Cloud Service Providers, 2019)

Amazon Web Server
Amazon Web server (AWS) is one of the oldest cloud service providers (Subsidiary of
Amazon). They are the one who provide in demand cloud computing services to individuals,
government or organisations on a metered pay basis. It is a web service and cloud computing
providers. All the services that are provided by Amazon Web Server are managed by their data
centres. From the above table it is clear that the main services provided by Amazon Web Server
are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). It provides more than 90
services but the main services provided by Amazon Web Servers is elastic compute cloud where
uses can have their disposal virtual cluster of computer which is available on internet available
all the time. The level of services Amazon Web Server provides suits all the requirements of the
Xero Organisation. Some of the most common services that they provide services are like data
management service like databases etc., web servers, CRM, networking, application services,
redundancy, deployment, security, etc.
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Il
lustration 4: Top Cloud Computing providers
(Source: Talk Cloud Computing, 2012)

5. Virtualisation in supporting and implementing cloud platforms
Virtualisation in simple words can be defined as creation of a virtual version of
something for example storage devices on network resources, operating system, servers etc. it is
a technology where applications, data storage, servers etc. are abstracted completely away from
true underlying hardware (Rao and Rao, 2015). In other words it can be defined as a technique
which allows sharing of a single application or service among multiple customers as well as
organisations. Need of virtualisation is continuously increasing as it helps in reducing physical
servers, reduces energy and power consumption as well as also helps in spending less time in
manual work which is required in server maintenance. Virtualisation is used by cloud service
providers as it helps them to provide services to their clients or customers in an effective manner.
There are various techniques of virtualisation which helps in implementing and supporting cloud
platforms.
 Network Visualisation: it is a technique where all the available resources are combined
into a network. It is done by splitting all the available bandwidths into channels in such a
way that those channels are completely independent from each other and can be assigned
or reassigned to any particular device and server in a real time. The main idea behind this
technique is to reduce the complexity of network by separating it into small parts that can
be managed easily.
 Storage Visualisation: it is a technique where pool of storage is managed from various
network storage devices into a single storage device which is managed from a central
console. It is most commonly used in storage area networks.
 Server Visualisation: it is technique where masking of server resources is done
including all the physical servers identity and numbers, operating systems and processors,
from all the server users. The main purpose of this technique is to relieve the users so that
they don't have to understand the complicated details of the server resources. They do not
have to think of increasing any kind of resource sharing, maintaining, utilising the
capacity of the resources to be expanded later.
 Data Visualisation: it is a technique where technical details related to the data, location,
data management, performance can be abstracted so that organisations can get a broader
access to the business needs in a better way.
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 Desktop Visualisation: it is a technique where virtualisation of a workstation load is
done rather than server. It helps and allows the users to access their desktop to access
remotely using a low cost computing device at the desk. As it is known that the
workstation essentially runs at data centre servers so it is quite portable and secure.
However, the operating system license is needed to be accounted as well as
infrastructure.
 Application Visualisation: it is a technique where abstracting of application layer is
done away from operating system. In this way an application can be operated and run
without being dependent upon operating system.
 Hardware Visualisation: It is a technique where virtual machine manager is installed
into hardware systems directly. It is mainly done for server platform as controlling virtual
machines is quite easier as compared to physical servers.
 Operating System Visualisation: it is a technique where virtual machine software is
directly installed into host operating system. It is used for testing any kind of application
on different platforms of operating system.
6. Ways Cloud Computing can support dynamic scaling of the Xero organisation applications
One of the most common benefit of cloud is its ability to remove or add capacity
whenever it is required (Lin and et.al., 2015). This ability to add or remove dramatically reduces
the the total cost of ownership of various kinds of applications. It is one of the most feasible
solution to many problems. It is mainly used in cloud computing for scaling web applications
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Illu
stration 5: Virtualization techniques
( Source: Virtualisation, 2019 )

based on thresholds. Here, comparison between Amazon and Microsoft platform will be
compared based on this property.
Amazon
Amazon Elastic compute cloud (Amazon EC2)one of the web service of Amazon Web
server which provides resizable computing in their cloud. It is designed so that web scaling
becomes much more easier for the developers. Amazon EC2 consist of Amazon Cloud Watch
which continuously monitors AWS cloud resources. It also helps in checking CPU utilisation,
network traffic etc. Another feature of Amazon EC2 is Auto scaling where overall capacity of
Amazon EC2 can be scaled up or down according to the user defined conditions.
Microsoft
Microsoft Azure is a cloud based operating system that provides computing and storage
capabilities that are mostly required by most of the cloud based applications. It provides robust
dynamic scaling capabilities. In this a third party provides process of dynamic scaling to
applications. It is mostly done by changing the instant count in the count of service
configurations. Scaling of Microsoft Azure applications is mostly exposed by using management
API. With the help of this API instant change in count in the service configuration can be done
by changing number of running instances.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarised that geographical network of Xero
organisation will comprise of CAN and LAN network, logical network diagram of complete
building had been designed, IP addresses used by the company will be of class C, Cloud service
providers that company can use are Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web server, it has also been
analysed that virtualisation supports cloud platforms in many ways and dynamic scaling can
support cloud computing in various ways.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Lin, X., and et.al., 2015. Task scheduling with dynamic voltage and frequency scaling for energy
minimization in the mobile cloud computing environment. IEEE Transactions on
Services Computing. 8(2). pp.175-186.
Nakamura, Y., and et.al., 2018, February. Classification of unknown Web sites based on yearly
changes of distribution information of malicious IP addresses. In 2018 9th IFIP
International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security (NTMS) (pp. 1-
4). IEEE.
Pfaff, B., and et.al., 2015. The design and implementation of open vswitch. In 12th {USENIX}
Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation ({NSDI} 15) (pp. 117-
130).
Ramachandran, M. and Chang, V., 2016. Towards performance evaluation of cloud service
providers for cloud data security. International Journal of Information
Management. 36(4). pp.618-625.
Rao, V.V. and Rao, M.V., 2015. Performance metrics and issues in network virtulization with
cloud environment. Journal of Cloud Computing Research. 1(1). pp.1-15.
Online
Cloud Service Providers. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.sdxcentral.com/cloud/definitions/what-are-cloud-service-providers/>
Talk Cloud Computing. 2012.[Online]. Available through:
<http://talkcloudcomputing.com/cloud-service-providers-compete-to-capture-the-cloud-
market/>
Virtualisation. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.znetlive.com/blog/virtualization-in-cloud-computing/>
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