Windows Server Deployment Proposal

Introduction

“We Make Windows” Inc., WMW, is an advertising firm which has 9 executive employees who manage and run the corporation, 15 sales and accounts department staff who maintain accounts and perform market research, 49 production, media and creative employees who advertise for the company, 12 finance and human resource personnel who are involved in financial and HR duties respectively and 5 IT staff who manage the information technology of the company. WMW has two sites, that is, the Los Angeles location and the New York location. The company has implemented networking equipment in both of the locations which have IPSec, which is a secure tunnel and thus it would help secure inter-site traffic over the Internet. Additionally, the company has implemented security mechanisms such as intrusion detection and firewall which will not be discussed in this essay. This essay provides a proposal for the Windows Server deployment of WMW.

A Description of the New Features of Windows Server 2016 which the Company Can Consider As Opportunities

Windows Server 2016 has new features that WMW can take advantage of and these include PowerShell 3.0 administration, Hyper-V manager, and Server administration. Firstly, the server manager would help the company to coordinate and administer multiple servers, either in a centralized or a decentralized manner. Secondly, the Hyper-V manager would help the corporation in that it would provide an interface for all the machines and the virtual networks in the company and thus it can be able to track any uses or breaches in the company networks or machines (Akhunzada et al., 2016). Besides, it would use advanced technologies such as augmented reality, which would help the organization to determine how things are in reality in terms of its networks and machines. Lastly, the PowerShell 3.0 manager would help WMW to secure itself from any disconnection of the Internet through the ensuring of a Robust Session Connection. Other features which would also be incorporated in the Windows Server 2016 include Active Directory which would include other features or functionalities such as Domain controller cloning, GUI and Dynamic Access Control (DAC) which would help in the commands of the PowerShell 3.0 manager (Akhunzada et al., 2016). The company can be able to control its IP addresses in a centralized network, which would cover all the networks of the firm. Here, it would be prudent to install both the Los Angeles and New York sites with similar configurations to assist in the tolerance of fault.

The Number of Total Servers Needed and the Roles Which Will Be Combined

The network of WMW will have 24 servers which will help handle the growth of the company for the next 2-3 years. Besides, having the 24 servers would enable the company to recover from failures (Wyglinski et al., 2016). These servers will provide services such as DHCP, printing services, DNS, web services, and file services. Additionally, WMW will mirror the Los Angeles location against the New York location which will help it to function in case the WAN goes down.

The Windows Edition for Each Server

For the core servers, the data center edition of Windows will be used which will enable the employees to access the data, but not to change it in order to prevent the manipulation of the data and ensure that data integrity exists (Wyglinski et al., 2016). For the other servers or the workstations, the standard edition of Windows will be used and the employees can input their own data which will be compared with the data in the central servers to enhance the integrity of the data.

Whether There Will Be A Core Server

Server cores will be used for the prime servers or the central servers which will only be accessible at the head offices of the two sites, that is, the Los Angeles site and the New York site.

The Location of Each of the Servers

The core servers will be two at each of the two sites. However, the remaining 22 servers will be located at the Los Angeles site which is the prime site for the company.

How the Servers Will Be Deployed, that is, Whether Manual or automated

The servers will be deployed automatically to the specific locations and this would help to ensure that the company has advanced technologies, thus earning it an edge in the market.

The Number of Active Directory Domains

The network of WMW will have two domains for both locations with wmw.com being for the LA location and south.wmw.com being for the NY location.

Presence of Any Read-Only DCs

Domain Controllers (DC) will be placed in each site. The domain controllers at each workstation would be read-only to prevent any manipulation of their data from taking place.

How the NY Site Will Factor into DC Placement and How the Active Directory Sites Will Be Configured

The NY site will be mirrored against the LA site and thus the AD sites will be configured to match the goals and security features of the company.

How the Active Directory Organizational Units Will Be Organized

Organizational Units (OU) will be used for the Active Directory with each functional area having its own OU. Objects will be created which will be organized according to the task role and placed into their respective OUs.

The Scope Design of the DHCP

The IPv4 addresses will be used to ensure simplicity of management since the IPv4 is the one that is currently being used by the organization. When WMW experiences growth and the adoption of the IPv6 increases globally, the company might reconsider to change from the IPv4 to the IPv6 (Zhang et al., 2016). The scope of the DHCP will be configured to last for at least 16 hours lease times, thus ensuring that an address assignment is able to cover a full work day while preventing the pool of addresses from running low. The company will apply the 80/20 rule for each scope in that 80% of the addresses within the scope of the DHCP will be provided by the New York location. This will help to provide address assignments in situations where the primary DHCP server is unable to fulfill its services.

Whether the DHCP Will Have A Fault Tolerance

The DHCP fault tolerance will be implemented by mirroring the Los Angeles site with the New York site in order to ensure that all the services performed are in line with each other.

Whether DHCP Reservations Will Be Used for Servers

Since there will be many devices that will use the company network, the computers will have static IP addresses rather than have DHCP reservations (Zhang et al., 2016). This will help the corporation to ensure that all the critical devices can be reached by the employees and the management in case the DHCP fails. Other devices like the workstations, the laptops, and so forth will have DHCP reservations.

DNS Namespace Design

The DNS is central to the Windows operation and will be created with the Active Directory. The DNS will exist on the Internet and not on the Intranet and thus it will not be in conflict with the internal namespace of the company.

How DNS Will Be Managed for the NY Site

The DNS services will be controlled and managed by the primary domain controllers of the Los Angeles site, which will also act as a backup for the servers in the New York site in case of failure or when the files are corrupted (Zhang et al., 2016). The company will apply the 80/20 rule for each scope in that 20% of the addresses within the scope of the DNS services will be provided by the Los Angeles site.

How the Software Applications Will Be Deployed, How the Group Policy Will Be Used to Deploy the Software Applications and the Software Applications That Will Be Needed

The software programs will be deployed by using group policy if the staff that requires the software applications are many. Here, the group policy management console within Windows Server 2016 would be used. Certain specific or general packages would be configured which will help to deploy the .msi files (Zhang et al., 2016). WMW could deploy packages such as QuickBooks, Adobe Reader, and Photoshop in different functional areas while packages such as Zenmap and Wireshark in the different servers. The company can also use software restriction policies to prevent unauthorized access and control execution of software at the discretion of the administrators. This would help the IT department to configure the software applications, thus preventing unauthorized programs.

The Shares That Might Be Needed

The role of the print services will be installed at the server for both the LA and NY locations. Ideally, there will be two print devices for each functional area. For this reason, any staff can use the print devices functional areas, however, they would have a lower priority when compared to the employees of that department. This means that the employees will have to share the printing devices since there will only be two for each department.

File Permissions

The file permissions will only be granted to the employees in that department. However, only specific employees in that department will be authorized to access the files.

Recommendations

WMW wants to deploy the Windows Server 2016. A recommendation would be to mirror the Los Angeles site with the New York site to enable easier DHCP fault tolerance. The main location will be the Los Angeles site which will contain the prime servers and also have the permission for file printing and sharing. Besides, WMW should incorporate the additional features for the Windows Server 2016 such as PowerShell 3.0 administration, Hyper-V administration, and Server administration which would help it earn a competitive advantage.

References

• Akhunzada, A., Gani, A., Anuar, N. B., Abdelaziz, A., Khan, M. K., Hayat, A., & Khan, S. U. (2016). Secure and dependable software-defined networks. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 61, 199-221.
• Wyglinski, A. M., Orofino, D. P., Ettus, M. N., & Rondeau, T. W. (2016). Revolutionizing software defined radio: case studies in hardware, software, and education. IEEE Communications Magazine, 54(1), 68-75.
• Zhang, Z., Ringeval, F., Han, J., Deng, J., Marchi, E., & Schuller, B. (2016, September). Facing realism in spontaneous emotion recognition from the speech: Feature enhancement by autoencoder with LSTM neural networks. In 17th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH 2016) (pp. 3593-3597).