Unit 1 Case Study Assignment 1 - Coursework Example

Small Office and Home Office Networking Small Office and Home Office Networking This paper outlines the requirements for setting up anetwork for a small office that will allow users to share data, office equipment such as printers and to keep track of business related data such as customer data. The following are questions to help determine the networking needs of the company.1. Will the company be adding new users in the near future?2. Will the company require applications such as voice and video conferencing and VPN for remote offices?3. Do they prefer a wired or wireless network or a mixture of both?4. How much downtime can the company tolerate before it becomes unacceptably expensive?5. How much have they set aside for building the network?6. How important is network security?7. Do they require internet access?

What kind of link do they require? Dialup? Dedicated link?8. How soon do they want the network up and running?9. Do they have a space with enough ventilation and free of moisture for setting up the servers?10. Will they require to use electronic mail or Gmail will be just fine?11. Will they require regular back up of their files?The users of the network will need to use both hardware and software systems. In terms of hardware, the client workstations can be laptops such as Dell or HP or they can use standalone personal computers consisting of a monitor, central processing unit, keyboard and mouse.

The minimum hardware they can have is a 1 gigahertz 64-bit or 32-bit processor, 2 gigabyte of memory (RAM) and 16 gigabytes of hard disk space. The recommend specifications are 1 gigahertz 64-bit processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM and 500 gigabytes of hard disk space.The operating systems they can choose from are windows 7 or windows 8 which are running a current Microsoft office software such as Microsoft Office 2010 or 2013. An antivirus program such as Kaspersky or Norton is a useful add-on.There are several types of server brands to choose from such as Dell, IBM and Oracle.

The minimum hardware for 5-25 users is a server with a 2GHz, 64 bit processor, 2GB memory (RAM) and a 160 Gigabyte hard disk (Micorsoft, n.d.). The recommended hardware is a 3.1 Gigahertz, 64-bit processor, 8GB RAM and a 500 Gigabyte hard disk. The recommended server software is Windows Server 2012 Essentials which is built to cater for small business environments (Technet, n.d). Fault tolerance requires that there is a spare part that takes over in case the original part fails. To make the server fault tolerant recommend options are: having spare memory modules in case the memory fails, having to network interface cards(NICs), having a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID), having a dual power supply and having two servers clustered so they appear as one server.

ReferencesTechnet. System Requirements for Windows Server 2012 Essentials. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200132.aspxMicrosoft. Windows 7 system requirements - Windows Help. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements