Scenario:

You work for a local law firm in the IT department. The firm provides a range of legal services. The company employs 50 staff located at the Cheltenham office. The current servers and workstations are struggling with performance and reliability. The IT director has requested you provide a detailed technical specification to replace the existing 50 workstations and 3 file servers. Server I is responsible for providing network services such as DHCP, DNS, file and print services. Server 2 provides databases to store and manage the customer and employee data. Server 3 provides email and Internet services, it also hosts the firm`s website. All the servers to the Internet. The replacement of the network architecture and printers are currently outside of the scope. No costings are required, this will be collected by a separate member of staff.

Your designs and analysis must be based on the scenario provided. DO not provide a general technical discussion on computer architecture and specification, network design and software. Provide reasons for Vour answers. The following provides an outline of the technical report:

• Title page;

• Contents page;

• Introduction: Provide an overview of the business requirements and scope of the project. Include any assumptions you have made, both technical and non-technical; 200 words]

• System specification and network architecture with associated diagrams: Detail and analyse the technical specification for the servers and workstations. Include the system components for servers 1, 2, 3 and the workstations to be replaced. This should include the motherboard, processor, memory, power, storage, peripherals and network card/s. Include any additional components to make the hardware more fault tolerant. System diagrams of the internal connectivity of the components for the servers and workstations also need to be detailed. Also, detail the network architecture. Provide a network diagram representing the connectivity of the new servers and workstations. The current network is fully functional, but provides little network security (a flat network). Provide network segmentation for the servers and workstations. Explain all your decisions; 1800 words)

• Operating systems: Detail and analyse the operating systems for the workstations and servers. Explain and analyse the different operating system architecture components for the workstations and servers; [400 words)

• Applications: Detail and analyse the applications for each server. This would include the applications to run the databases, email and Internet services; [400 words)

• Conclusion; 200 words)

• References.

Learning outcomes

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the component parts of IT hardware and operating systems, their limitations and the risks they expose a business to;
2. Evaluate and communicate the appropriateness of different approaches to solving problems and assessing the results of their study/work accurately and reliably, and with structured and coherent arguments.