Individual Project

About Ryan Computer Enterprises

Ryan Computer Enterprises formed in 2000, and provides leading business solutions. Currently there are over 8000 employees that are located throughout five states with three locations in Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Texas and New York. The administrative office currently is located in Pennsylvania. Currently there are over 500 additional employees located in the corporate headquarters. The company provides cutting edge solutions and needs USAA, JP Morgan, Goldman Sacks and other financial institutions. In 2002, Forbes magazine rated Ryan Computer Enterprises as the number one business organization for the field of technical consultation.

Major clients of Ryan Computer Enterprises are all in the field of investment banking and insurance. Some major factors of focus for the company will be improvement of business process the clientele have set in place, legacy systems and to have a set solution in place to be utilized thought their organization. Ryan Computer Enterprises has stated that our goal is align both the company and client goals.

Ryan Computer Enterprises has slowly replaced existing infrastructure over the years focusing on workstation, printer, switch and routers. Some areas of interest that go beyond the physical infrastructure are application upgrades. The applications that are in questions for upgrades are DBMS and other various apps such as Office 365. It has been over 2 years since the last upgrade to the IT system has been conducted and in order to provide better security and stability it has been decided that specific facets that have been listed must be upgraded as well as servers and the use of cloud technology must be implemented to allow for virtual storage of information. Other technology that should be visited is the addition of WAPs through out the facilities this allows the vendors and employees to use their mobile devices and other wireless items as well as the clientele.

The last item for discussion that will be addressed as an upgrade will be the addition of remote access. Having VPN capabilities allows Ryan Computer Enterprises to better facilitate troubleshooting and adds to the functionality of its employees. All email services as well as server access allow an employee to better assist with technical work as well as giving the clients the ability to conduct business wherever they might be located.

Metrics that are used to identify some of the issues are based on multiple factors but some basic issues are the aging equipment and the lack of network monitoring that is in place. The switches that are in place have very limited throughput and as a result of these issues it has been decided that the business will upgrade from the current 100 Mbps to 1000 Mbps switches. The most crucial replacement will be the core switch that will offer the ability to monitor network activity. Some other metrics that are used for the network will be the latency and bandwidth that are utilized as a result of users on the network and the increased size of files that are transported.

The current setup of the network is one of redundancy meaning that in the NOC there are two MAN routers, two switches that act as a redundant system should the network go down on one core it switches to the other. The system has a main core that the switches are connected two and then from Gunner1 and Gunner2 they move to the distribution cores that are installed. The redundant system runs on a 1 G data link and is a redundant system at our main enterprise building. Both distribution cores have a direct line to the WAN router, which goes out to the Verizon WAN network. From the NOC you will travel down into the data center core. Once in the data center it branches off into blade server connections. From that data center core there are two 3560 switches on a 1 G connection going into two physical servers. From the data center core you would branch off into two 5548 UPS and each UPS branches off into two 2248’s which are connected to a server. The 5548 UPS also goes to two sets of 2232 switches and from there to servers.

Aside from the network layout we have VOIP phones, Lenovo workbooks and multiple printers on each floor. Some software that we currently have is my SQL DBMS with some applications designed specifically for the company.

Currently we need to update our switches and routers due to the age of the equipment always changing along with the newer technology. Currently we have redundancy built through our network and the capability is already in place just upgrading to newer equipment allows us to maintain and even improve off of what we have in place along with the replacement of UPS’s within the company network infrastructure.

The metrics that is being utilized for determining what we need to upgrade is the amount of maintenance that occurs on a monthly basis. Because funding is tight the company has decided to replace the physical equipment first and then move forward with the network equipment. Maintenance time has determined how we will address the situation moving forward.

· TCP/IP Addressing and Management

· Document an addressing scheme for the TCP/IP addresses used for the network.

· Include categories of network resources, users, and the address ranges to be used for the current and potential future resources and users.

· Provide justification for the addressing scheme.

Describe the TCP/IP address maintenance process planned for the system. Maintenance should include assignment of new addresses and a periodic review of currently assigned addresses.

· Fault Tolerance Plan

· Identify at least 5 potential causes of network failure.

· For each potential cause of network failure, create a plan with the necessary steps and required hardware to reduce the risk of failure.

Include the cost and benefit comparison for each risk reduction plan to justify the plan.

· Security Plan

· Conduct a review of the current network security for your target organization.

· Identify at least 5 major areas of security risk for the network.

· For each security risk area, develop and document a plan to reduce the security risk.

Include a description of any software, processes, or other changes necessary to implement the plan.

· Network Monitoring

· Identify the performance metrics that will be measured for the system.

· Discuss the collection process for the metrics and the tools that will be used.Document the analysis process that will help determine if there are performance problems occurring or about to occur and the steps that will be taken if a problem is identified.