School project

[GreyDeathangel]

Hi all,

Im currently in the final quarter of school, and we were building a three lab multi building network design and we dont get much info on materials. 

 

Still trying to build a server room. I have 1 standard rack worth of space to install it needs to run a file server, VMs, web server, mac, printing. We were thinking of virtualize most of the servers.

 

Any suggestions?

More info needed?

 

Thanks,

Dave

[Nineshadow]

Yeah, virtualization would be the way to go.

[wraptor]

8 minutes ago, GreyDeathangel said:

Hi all,

Im currently in the final quarter of school, and we were building a three lab multi building network design and we dont get much info on materials. 

 

Still trying to build a server room. I have 1 standard rack worth of space to install it needs to run a file server, VMs, web server, mac, printing. We were thinking of virtualize most of the servers.

 

Any suggestions?

More info needed?

 

Thanks,

Dave

Ofcourse virtualize it!
It assigns the resources better, failover and above all. Its kinda safer. If the fileserver for instance gets compromized, just turn off the network connection and find out the problem. (If its just a access breach, if its a virus then yo f*cked mate)
Also, Keep the heaviest stuff to the ground (But you knew that already, right?)

Good luck on your project, make shure to let us know if any progress has been made.

Edited July 6, 2016 by tv15dsi
Made it more dramastic :Þ

[GreyDeathangel]

Okay so i was able to convince the group to virtualize the server.

Since we need to price out hardware i need to figure out what to install in the server room.

Heres the design of the network so far...

Labs 

1 switch [with both fiber and ethernet support, fiber goes back to servers, ethernet connects to workstations]

1 wireless access point

1 printer networked

1 smartboard (still debating on this one)

31 workstations each lab [we need to have 1 lab with PCs (not virtual pcs), 1 lab with MACs, and the third lab with Zero clients]

Backbone cables are going fiber

Server room

I know were going to need UPSs routers, switches, just dont know what best kind of servers to run in here

 

This project might be all Theory, but we need to go into detail on the costs of equipment and justify why we need certain equipment over other choices.

 

Then i have to come up with a solid disaster recovery plan with off site backups.

 

Plan is once i get done with this quarter ill have a associate degree in Network Administration. Then its time to get in the field.

[GreyDeathangel]

7 hours ago, tv15dsi said:

Ofcourse virtualize it!
It assigns the resources better, failover and above all. Its kinda safer. If the fileserver for instance gets compromized, just turn off the network connection and find out the problem. (If its just a access breach, if its a virus then yo f*cked mate)
Also, Keep the heaviest stuff to the ground (But you knew that already, right?)

Good luck on your project, make shure to let us know if any progress has been made.

Yep dont want to make it top heavy now do we

[wraptor]

7 hours ago, GreyDeathangel said:

Okay so i was able to convince the group to virtualize the server.

Since we need to price out hardware i need to figure out what to install in the server room.

Heres the design of the network so far...

Labs 

1 switch [with both fiber and ethernet support, fiber goes back to servers, ethernet connects to workstations]

1 wireless access point

1 printer networked

1 smartboard (still debating on this one)

31 workstations each lab [we need to have 1 lab with PCs (not virtual pcs), 1 lab with MACs, and the third lab with Zero clients]

Backbone cables are going fiber

Server room

I know were going to need UPSs routers, switches, just dont know what best kind of servers to run in here

 

This project might be all Theory, but we need to go into detail on the costs of equipment and justify why we need certain equipment over other choices.

 

Then i have to come up with a solid disaster recovery plan with off site backups.

 

Plan is once i get done with this quarter ill have a associate degree in Network Administration. Then its time to get in the field.

Do switches exist with both RJ-45 and Fiber connectors?
For the workstations, what work is going to be done on these stations? And why MACs? As of Zero clients, Intel NUCS maybe?
Servers, depends on the needs.
UPSs depend on the servers, their power needs etc.

So what are these servers going to be used for, use of workstations etc.

That could help us out quitte a bit

[GreyDeathangel]

Alright so the request for proposal asked for the PCs (they wanted them to do accounting and basic word, so basiclly Microsoft Office type software), the MACs is also something they wanted (i personally voted for using zero clients for all the workstations, but was voted down by the group im with, "itd be too difficult to virtualize MACs" they said ) adobe suite (graphic design/photo stuff), and the last lab i was able to get my virtual desktops.

 

I thought i heard of switches that have extra ports on the side that you could attach a optical in/out to, might be wrong, ill have to look into a solution for that.

 

As for the servers

Active Directory

File server

Print server

Web server

Email server (instructor is pushing exchange)

Active directory will have a trust to another network, but we dont get any details on that

It needs its own internet, so its own ISP and router

There will also need to be a space for the VMs that will run on this network 

 

 

[wraptor]

8 hours ago, GreyDeathangel said:

Alright so the request for proposal asked for the PCs (they wanted them to do accounting and basic word, so basiclly Microsoft Office type software), the MACs is also something they wanted (i personally voted for using zero clients for all the workstations, but was voted down by the group im with, "itd be too difficult to virtualize MACs" they said ) adobe suite (graphic design/photo stuff), and the last lab i was able to get my virtual desktops.

 

I thought i heard of switches that have extra ports on the side that you could attach a optical in/out to, might be wrong, ill have to look into a solution for that.

 

As for the servers

Active Directory

File server

Print server

Web server

Email server (instructor is pushing exchange)

Active directory will have a trust to another network, but we dont get any details on that

It needs its own internet, so its own ISP and router

There will also need to be a space for the VMs that will run on this network 

 

 

You only need to virtualize the servers
Having a solid OS on every machine works just fine.
Its the servers that need redundancy etc, if a workstation dies, you just fix it or replace it.

As for those tasks, an i3 or pentium would be more than enough, but opt for a i5 for future proofing, if for instance those computers are going to be used for Developement or other CPU intensive applications.

You mean a SFP+ port on a switch? Thats Copper cable

How many servers are you planning on buying/building?
What load are you going to put on what? AD and Web server in a 2 server (failover-)cluster for instance.

I've never used exchange, I'm using hMailserver because of the easy setup. But I've got not that many websites running so It'll be fine for me.
Exchange seems like enterprise grade gear so you should be opting for that yes.

As for a router, building a pfSense box would be the best solution to me.

[techyboy101]

Quote

You mean a SFP+ port on a switch? Thats Copper cable

Umm.... They're actually fiber, there are Direct Attach Copper Cables, but they aren't as popular, and the normal transceivers run on fiber.

 

As with the virtualization, you have some choices what you want to use as a hypervisor/infrastructure: you could do an open stack deployment, open nebula (my choice), Xen Server (the easiest to set up), or Hyper-V (expensive licensing).

 

Host Servers can be Dual hexa or octa core hyperthreaded xeons with 64GB RAM on a dell or similar server. My choice is a R710, R720, or R730.

 

I would suggest you have a distributed file system for the virtualization so you could have virtual machines that can roam from host to host.

 

[samcool55]

10 hours ago, GreyDeathangel said:

Alright so the request for proposal asked for the PCs (they wanted them to do accounting and basic word, so basiclly Microsoft Office type software), the MACs is also something they wanted (i personally voted for using zero clients for all the workstations, but was voted down by the group im with, "itd be too difficult to virtualize MACs" they said ) adobe suite (graphic design/photo stuff), and the last lab i was able to get my virtual desktops.

 

I thought i heard of switches that have extra ports on the side that you could attach a optical in/out to, might be wrong, ill have to look into a solution for that.

 

As for the servers

Active Directory

File server

Print server

Web server

Email server (instructor is pushing exchange)

Active directory will have a trust to another network, but we dont get any details on that

It needs its own internet, so its own ISP and router

There will also need to be a space for the VMs that will run on this network 

 

 

Yea you can virtualize all those servers.

I haven't read everything but what i would do (i've seen small/medium size companies do this) is take a badass server, virtualize everything on it and have an equally powerfull or slower server making a perfect copy of it every hour or something.

 

Also work with snapshots or whatever, i don't know  It's just in case a virtual server dies, or the physical server completely dies, it's just a matter of poking the other server awake (if you have done it properly) and off you go. Almost no downtime and you have time to diagnose it properly.

[leadeater]

For my old job the standard spec we installed for schools is below, we only serviced the education sector fyi.

 

2x IBM x3650 M4/M5 with 2x Intel E5-2630 64GB RAM (Now lenovo)

1x IBM DS3524 (Now V3700) (Also now Lenovo)

1x Allied Telesis x900-24XS or a stack of Allied Telesis x610's

1x FortiGate 600C (router provided by ISP in bridge mode)

1x 12 3.5" Bay NAS (take your pick, QNAP/Synology/WD etc) for backups in different building

3x Eaton 9130 3000VA UPS with network module

VMware vSphere Essentials Plus

Veeam Backup & Replication

Microsoft licensing was taken care of by government education agreement, which was almost all you can eat.

 

Virtual server list below (I know I've forgotten some VMs but you get the idea):

<schoolcode>-DC01

<schoolcode>-DC02

<schoolcode>-FS01 (staff file server)

<schoolcode>-FS02 (student file server)

<schoolcode>-PS01 (print server, print costing application also usually PaperCut)

<schoolcode>-TS01 (terminal server, staff)

<schoolcode>-TS02 (terminal server, student)

<schoolcode>-EX01 (Exchange)

<schoolcode>-DB01 (Database server)

<schoolcode>-AS01 (Application server, student management system)

<schoolcode>-AS02 (Application server, LMS usually Moodle)

<schoolcode>-AS03 (Application server, usually financial application

<schoolcode>-LIB01 (Application server, Library application)

<schoolcode>-NM01 (Network management)

<schoolcode>-VC01 (vCenter)

<schoolcode>-VMA01 (VMware integration server to do clean shutdown of VMs and hosts during power failure, interfaces with the UPS network modules)

 

The above spec is for a school of around 1400 students with 6 computer labs of 31 computers, 3 labs being Macs, with a total computer count including staff laptops of about 600. This also had a wireless network of about 60 access points (details not shown) for student BYOD. You can scale the server spec up or down to meet the size of the school or increase the number but 2 is the minimum. We had around 1000 schools following this model, important to keep things similar across clients as it makes support much simpler and cheaper.

 

Edge network cabinets used Allied Telesis x510's, as many as required. Desktops were HP EliteDesk 800 series and again subsidized through a government purchasing scheme called All of Government (AOG). Macs had to be purchased at full cost.

 

Networking costs were also taken care of by the government under the School Network Upgrade Program (SNUP), state schools only had to pay for 20% of the cost.

 

Happy to help further .

[GreyDeathangel]

On Thursday, July 07, 2016 at 9:57 PM, leadeater said:

For my old job the standard spec we installed for schools is below, we only serviced the education sector fyi.

 

2x IBM x3650 M4/M5 with 2x Intel E5-2630 64GB RAM (Now lenovo)

1x IBM DS3524 (Now V3700) (Also now Lenovo)

1x Allied Telesis x900-24XS or a stack of Allied Telesis x610's

1x FortiGate 600C (router provided by ISP in bridge mode)

1x 12 3.5" Bay NAS (take your pick, QNAP/Synology/WD etc) for backups in different building

3x Eaton 9130 3000VA UPS with network module

VMware vSphere Essentials Plus

Veeam Backup & Replication

Microsoft licensing was taken care of by government education agreement, which was almost all you can eat.

 

Virtual server list below (I know I've forgotten some VMs but you get the idea):

<schoolcode>-DC01

<schoolcode>-DC02

<schoolcode>-FS01 (staff file server)

<schoolcode>-FS02 (student file server)

<schoolcode>-PS01 (print server, print costing application also usually PaperCut)

<schoolcode>-TS01 (terminal server, staff)

<schoolcode>-TS02 (terminal server, student)

<schoolcode>-EX01 (Exchange)

<schoolcode>-DB01 (Database server)

<schoolcode>-AS01 (Application server, student management system)

<schoolcode>-AS02 (Application server, LMS usually Moodle)

<schoolcode>-AS03 (Application server, usually financial application

<schoolcode>-LIB01 (Application server, Library application)

<schoolcode>-NM01 (Network management)

<schoolcode>-VC01 (vCenter)

<schoolcode>-VMA01 (VMware integration server to do clean shutdown of VMs and hosts during power failure, interfaces with the UPS network modules)

 

The above spec is for a school of around 1400 students with 6 computer labs of 31 computers, 3 labs being Macs, with a total computer count including staff laptops of about 600. This also had a wireless network of about 60 access points (details not shown) for student BYOD. You can scale the server spec up or down to meet the size of the school or increase the number but 2 is the minimum. We had around 1000 schools following this model, important to keep things similar across clients as it makes support much simpler and cheaper.

 

Edge network cabinets used Allied Telesis x510's, as many as required. Desktops were HP EliteDesk 800 series and again subsidized through a government purchasing scheme called All of Government (AOG). Macs had to be purchased at full cost.

 

Networking costs were also taken care of by the government under the School Network Upgrade Program (SNUP), state schools only had to pay for 20% of the cost.

 

Happy to help further .

Thanks thats a lot of useful info there

[vorticalbox]

On 7/7/2016 at 7:30 AM, GreyDeathangel said:

Yep dont want to make it top heavy now do we

we used to put PSUs in the roof for the longest time