Theoretical schoolwork

[ColorPulse]

Hello!

As I`m studying IT, but really dont know much about virtualization and servers, because I went in statistics and data mining, but complimentory course include information systems, I need a little bit of help and knowledge from others.(Preferably with some explanation.) Will appreciate it a lot, if i could get some responses.

 

So the example I have to analyse or improve is this->

->IT company which does programming in c++, java, php and home page development, has Windows server 2000 with file server and active directories, Ubuntu with e-mail server, Centos with web server and Joomla CMS, Debian with firewall service, Ubuntu with Jira service. Company has 25 employees of which 10 use Remote desktop, others do the work at the office, but would also like to do work remotely if needed.

-So the questions, of which are 6, are:

 

1. With what kind of software and what type of audit should i do for companies IT infrastructure? [question from me:how does the auditing actually happen and what does it test?]

2. The company wants to virtualize the servers - what type of hypervisor should i suggest? How to remain security and optimal work enviroment? what are the benefits of integrating the virtual technologies?

3. What type of configuration i should use for the server where the hypervisor is on? How much of resources(RAID, LAN, HDD, RAM, CPU) and how many of those recourses for each of the virtual machines?[ question from me:How can u tell how much will be needed?]

4. How to make extra copies form virtual servers?

5. Which SAFE solution there is to provide remote work for employees?

6. Which are the main benefits of launching this system and programming all together?

 

Thanks, i would like to hear some answers in more of form of explanation, becuase i have never come across deploying virtual server.

Thanks again!

[leadeater]

32 minutes ago, ColorPulse said:

1. With what kind of software and what type of audit should i do for companies IT infrastructure? [question from me:how does the auditing actually happen and what does it test?]

2. The company wants to virtualize the servers - what type of hypervisor should i suggest? How to remain security and optimal work enviroment? what are the benefits of integrating the virtual technologies?

3. What type of configuration i should use for the server where the hypervisor is on? How much of resources(RAID, LAN, HDD, RAM, CPU) and how many of those recourses for each of the virtual machines?[ question from me:How can u tell how much will be needed?]

4. How to make extra copies form virtual servers?

5. Which SAFE solution there is to provide remote work for employees?

6. Which are the main benefits of launching this system and programming all together?

 

1. The auditing process is up to the auditor. What you need to look for and ask is dependent on the question being asked, the type and amount of deliverables expected from the audit and the defined scope.

 

For the proposed scenario I would not use or trust some auditing software to give me the information I would be looking for. Physical on site inspections with both formal and informal meetings will be far more useful.

 

Start with the basics:

• Physical hardware: Servers, Switches, Desktops, Laptops etc
• Hardware warranty statuses
• Software licenses: What do they have, type of license, license usage
• Software maintenance agreements: Do they have any, what does this entitle them to
• Current backup process: What is it, where is it, how often, for how long
• What OS do they use on their primary desktops/laptops
• What collaboration and source control software do they use

Plenty more you can ask but this should get you thinking.

 

2. This is a hard one to answer without extra information such as do they require High Availability (HA), budget etc as not every feature is free depending on the hypervisor.

 

The current and most trusted leader in the business/corporate space is VMware vSphere which comes in many different editions and feature entitlements, there is a free option. Microsoft Hyper-V Server is also another good option, this is also free but has paid complimentary products from the System Center Suite. KVM is also another popular choice.

 

Of the three my first choice by a long way is VMware but if you do require HA Hyper-V Server supports this for free, with VMware that is a paid feature.

 

There are many many more hypervisors out there, way too many to bother to list.

 

As for security, this really is a non issue they are inherently secure and all the hypervisor developers work at great lengths to insure this is true and remains so. Security of the OS in the VM is much more of a concern.

 

The benefits of virtualization are very well documented, suggest you do a decent amount of research in to this and truly understand them. One of the key ones is better utilization of hardware resources.

 

3. Hard to give much advice on the hardware side of things without some idea of requirements. I know what I would quote in a real situation such as this but I think that information would be crossing over the merely being helpful/giving advice line.

 

The hardware specification will also be dependent on what they currently have. Just always go dual CPU or better, never single. There's no such thing as too much RAM (sort of), get plenty 64GB+. RAID 6 will be fine and allow for expansion.

 

4. Hypervisors have what are called templates. You customize this to how you need it then you use this as a reference and make copies/clones of it for new VMs. This is also not always a free feature.

 

5. I'm going to assume for now that the primary OS used by the employees is Windows so a Windows Server running the Remote Desktop Services role will do this job.

 

6. Ahh don't really get the question??

 

 

Happy to answer any other questions you have or give any extra information. Just keep in mind I've purposefully been generic as possible and kept things vague, don't want to be specifically answering anything in your assignment as that is for you to do.   

[ColorPulse]

As the virtualization is primary for that class to teach, so i can simply asume, that cloud services can do the job, right?

Like the https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

and just put in the count of users and needed services. I dont want to make the things too complicated. But then again, how does the hypervision work on that platform ?

 

Practically I could just answer it as to put everything on cloud computing, analyze it after the first month usage and increase/decrease amount of needed services/hardware/operations? And just state valid arguments for this instance

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, ColorPulse said:

As the virtualization is primary for that class to teach, so i can simply asume, that cloud services can do the job, right?

Like the https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

and just put in the count of users and needed services. I dont want to make the things too complicated. But then again, how does the hypervision work on that platform ?

 

Practically I could just answer it as to put everything on cloud computing, analyze it after the first month usage and increase/decrease amount of needed services/hardware/operations? And just state valid arguments for this instance

Cloud can be extremely costly and isn't the answer for everything. Also to effectively use cloud services you need a very good internet connection. The other issue is that cloud services can increase the complexity of backups not reduce, if you don't trust or need more than geo-replicated data then you have to backup somehow and pulling data out of a cloud provider is charged increasing backup costs.

 

The web servers and email services makes perfect sense to put in the cloud. You could recommend either Google Apps for Work or Microsoft Office 365. For the web servers almost any hosting service would work but you need to check how easy it is to upload/integrate with the development tools to apply code changes.

 

For the file server this is where cloud starts to not be very appealing. Both the VM is changed and then on top of this the data is charged. Also without a very fast low latency link to the cloud provider accessing files will be noticeably slower.

 

Onsite Servers:

• Active Directory (It's own VM)
• File Server
• Remote Access Server

Cloud Services:

• Active Directory (Secondary, always have two)
• Email: Google Apps or Office 365
• 2 Web Servers

For the firewall get something hardware based, like a FortiGate 60D/80D. Software based firewalls really aren't a google idea, especially not a proper firewall product. They also struggle to have decent SSL and VPN throughput which is very important when you start connecting your local network to a cloud provider.

 

This way you can get away with a very simple and cost effective server and depending on how much data their is use a cloud backup service, I would also backup to a local QNAP/Synology NAS.