Fiction Corporation and the Right Network Technology Plan - Assignment Example

Making the correct and appropriate network technology decisions are essential in ensuring that the organization attains its goals, the morale of the employees is retained , and the cost incurred is tenable with organization’s bu8dgetart plan and financial objectives. In order to ensure that there us smooth transition of organization networking system from one location to the other, the right network technology plan must be developed and implemented. In most cases, migrating a data center needs a flush cutover of the network system in order to supply remote systems that have access before and after migration. Wide-IP intends to develop a number of router configuration changes that would enable data center routers to be easily transferred ,one at a time and dismantling the old lines after the installed new data center are proven. This is essential in providing an uninterrupted user support during the transfer and reducing the ongoing operational risk. Background Fiction Corporation, a retail chain needs to move a new headquarter several miles away. Considering the distance and the chain operations, the main challenge is moving all the personell to the new headquarters and ensuring that the data center supports all the retail sales and warehouse operations. Whereas the warehouse functions from Monday to Saturday,allowing one day to transfer an AS/400 and develop new SNA links,most of the stores will be open for 24 hours, which will be significant in ensuring non interruption transfer of the network system. Basing on the viewpoint of data processing,the migration of network system will include as AS/400,a large UPS, NT PC and Novell servers, and multiple RS/6000 AIX application servers.The network will be made up of about 75 stores that are connected through frame relay that has ISDN backup to three routers located in data center.The three routers will run a common LAN that will be shared by the headquesrter staff,the warehouse and the data center. An important point to consider is there will be a possibility of everything being shut down on the Friday evening during the week of data network system transfer.During this time,fiction corporation will run backups on every server,dismantle all headquarter employee systems and data center, and reconfiguration of immovable warehouse systems. Business goals The major business goals are to reduce operational inefficiency, minimize operational cost, and improve employees productivity. Minimizing operation cost, which is measured in terms of cost per computer per year, will be achieved by utilizing efficient computers,developing appropriate cost accounting measures that aim at reducing the expenses involved in purchasing spare parts,increasing the labour per hour costs and automating most of manual aspects such as developing efficient electronic payment system and installing accounting software to replace manual book keeping measures.Reducing operation inefficiency , which is measured in terms of availability of network, aims at reducing the mothly downtime hours.In addition, it aims at minimizing the duration in which documents are processed by the organization. Increasing employees productivity involve increasing employees per hour by automating computer system so that all operation hours can be utilized fully. Technical goals The main technical goals are improving network capacity and speed and enhancing network security.Improving network capacity and speed will involve replacing the PSTN lines with T3 lines and installing frame relay and site to site IP in order to enhance WAN backup security and links.Improvimng network security will involve creating isolated VLANS for each store top prevent one store from accessing data from the other store using other servers,replacing hubs with managed switch in order to monitor,configure and manage your LAN and control how data is flowing through the network and its accessibility.In addition,network security goals will ensure that staff are aware of HIPAA regulations in order to enhance their ability to manage information. Technical Approach In order to ensure that there is no interruption in the operations of network system as a result of migration, Wide-IP will develop a plan that will enable the migration to take place in phases, thus allowing managing infor54mation system (MIS) staff to concentrate on each phase at a time to prevent time wastage. A vital factor in the success of the plan is the availability of TI link between the two sites, the old site and new site, to support remote bridging and to come up with configurations for the remote routers in order to support both headquarters simultaneously. By breaking the network system migration process into many stages and moving each data center router at a time will assist in developing necessary configurations for each stage and will ensure that there is an independent transfer of units that are dependent upon the data center. The transfer of the network hardware and the router configuration associated with it will be undertaken during the week .During the weekends, members of staff available will assist in moving application systems and testing will be carried out without disruptions or fear of incorrect network configurations. Current state of network The current network consist of switches hubs that link to the warehouses and the call centers. The local internet service provider is linked by PSTN while the internet gateway is single.There is no isolated VLAN and so call center and warehouses can acess data from toher other call centers or warehouses. In each VPN, there is no firewall and network system is not fully secure. The data support center supports 3 remote warehouses and offsite 100 call centers. Furhter, the old headquarter consists of 4 RS/6000 AIX application servers, 20 PC servers, 2 large UPS, and 10 virtualized servers. Physical design In the new headquarters,the main floor has servers and the main frame.The main frames links with the servers. There are managed switches, which emanate from different floors, connect to the main frame. The following are the features of physical design: The building has offices and stores that are equipped with category 5e wallplates and cabling. The managed switches are placed and used within the building. The managed switched assist in managing and mo0nitoring LAN traffick.They provide the ability to monitor, configure , and manage LAN. In monitoring the devices on the network, the managed switches use Simple Network Management Protocol.This protocol assists in displaying data in a format that is easily understood and so IT managers in the central site can excellently manage the network performance and easily identify problems within the network and repair them without bothering to physically work on the switch. An independent router is used on the second floor to manage the VLAN to prevent staff of retail stores from accessing critical information for the management of the organization. Logical design In order to attain the business and technical goals, Wide-IP applied cisco SAFE architecture in developing the logical design.The main goal is to provide the best practices in implementing and designing secure networks.The logical design utilizes a modular approach that enhances flexibility in network design and facilitates trouble shooting and implementation of the design.Cisco SAFE approach has multiple layers for system security.These multiple layers operate under unified strategy of providing security and protection to the whole network system and its components. The network topology is categorized into three modules(functional areas).These are enterprise retail stores edge, service provider edge, and enterprise edge.Enterprise stores edge does not provide remore connection and contains the entire functions needed for independednt operations that occur in within one location or store of the organization.Enterprise edge consists of all functions needed to communicate between remote locations and Enterprise stores edge. Service provider edge represents WAN and the internet connections that are provided by internet service providers(ISP).The functional areas are made up of network modules that include access,distribution and core layer functionalities.Acess layer is , which is located within in the headquarter building, combines end users from the work groups and links them to the distribution layer of the building.It contains all components that enables authorized user to have network access within the building. Distribution layer ,in which routing is enabled, provides access between the core and work groups.Further, this layer control acess to varied services by executing access lists. Redudant links and switches to backbone and acess of network are implemented in this layer and enables network to continue functioning even when one of the links or routers is down.Core layer functions by providing high speed link or connection between data and distribution server,access layer and edge. Implementation plan with schedule The migration of data center from the old headquarter to new headquarter will take place basing on a one month schedule and is expected to offer the best predicted results. In addition, the migration strategies will ensure that there are no disruption\ns in retail operations. The schedule for the networking process will be one month and will be as follow. Reconfiguring stores that connect to the first router to move and offer support to two more PVCs in the new lo9cation. Reconfiguring of the current headquarter router planned to be transferred in order to help in developing new warehouse IP addresses. Reconfiguring the routers for the stores to dial up back up to either numbers of the new or old locations Moving the first router and then testing frame T1 for store access, two ISDN PRIs for backup, and TI to old location. The ISDN PRIs are one for remote bridging and the other for stores. During the first weekend, apart from AS/400, all data center server systems and the back up of retail sales support will be moved.AS/400 will move with the main UPS. The second router to the new location will be moved .The 2nd store frame TI and the 3rd PRI will be established. Support systems and the skeleton MIS staff will be transferred to the new location. While retaining the old link for backup, all store routers will be configured to prefer new location links. During the second weekend, AS/400 will be moved from the old data center to the new data center in the new headquarter. There will be no activity because all attention will be directed to this transfer. Most of managing information systems (MIS) staff will be moved, leaving behind a small number of staff in order to provide technical support to headquarters users and other activities that may require their attention. During the third weekend, all headquarter systems and staff from the old site will be relocated to the new site. The old-new link from remote bridging will be reconfigured to DLSw for SNA support and normal routing for IPX and ISP. The backup retail server and the third counter router will be transferred to the new data center. The warehouse remote router will be left behind. All store routers will be reconfigured to only support the new headquarter location. During implementation, the issues that will be closer attention are identification of any connectivity problems, validating of WAN and LAN device selection and technologies, and verification of the agreement between the organization and the internet service providers. Results for networking design testing Any networking system operation is bound to face several hurdles before it becomes fully functional. One of the glitches involved moving individual network connections and systems, which needed more time and expertise. In addition to the anticipated errors in frame relay configurations, there were several hardware problems that needed more time to repair. ISDN backup worked correctly during the process of network migration and the normal frame relay problems did not affect the connectivity of the store. The only problems in networking operation involved the need to offer support to IPX over remote bridging during when the novell servers were transferred and the time headquarter staff moved to the new location. In the testing, one work group applied inefficient written data base application that could not support the added delay in the remote bridge. During the installation of the net network sysyetm, the major failure occurred when the TI links between the new sites and old sites failed during peak time and the ISDN backup was triggered to support the link. Although the functioning of the ISDN line was optimal,its data rate of 64kbps was too low to provide sufficient support to the traffick in HQ Novell. As a result,there were disrupted warehouse operations and SNA connections timed out.Novell’s server shutdown reduced sufficient loading to restart SNA session but appropriate networking strategy that involved upgrading the servers ensured that the link was restored. 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