Windows Server Proposal Paper

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Windows Server Deployment Proposal

Professor Jared Spencer

CMIT 369 Installing and Configuring Windows Server

Elizabeth Schulz

October 4th 2015

CONTENTS

Summary…………………………………………. …………………………...…...3

New Features of Windows Server 2012…………............................................…...4

Deployment and Server Editions…………………………………………………..4

· How many total servers are needed?

· What edition of Windows will be used for each server?

· Will Server Core be used on any servers?

· Where are each of the servers located?

· How will the servers be deployed?

Active Directory……………………………………………………………………..6

· Number of AD domains?

· Will there be any Read-Only Domain Controllers?

· How will AD sites be configured?

· How will AD organizational units be organized?

DNS and DHCP………………………………………………………………………8

· DHCP scope design

· DNS namespace

Application Services………………………………………………………………….9

· How will applications be deployed?

· Which software applications will likely be needed?

File and Printer Sharing……………………………………………………………..9

· What shares might be needed?

· DFS Needed?

· How will quotas/FSRM be configured?

Man Power/Scheduling estimates…………………………………………………...11

Conclusion………………..…......................................................................................11

References……………………………...………..........................................................12

Summary

With today’s businesses relying so heavily on technology it is important that your new company develops the correct Windows network infrastructure the first time. That being said it is also important to make sure that the infrastructure is reliable, secure and well managed. All businesses have different requirements and environments but they all have the need for an IT organization that can help them reach their goals. After reviewing the companies requirements I have decided on what I believe will give you the best overall infrastructure.

In this proposal I will talk about what kind of new features of Windows server 2012 that WAI can take advantage of. I will also list the deployment plan and what editions I plan to use. Active directory, DNS and DHCP, application services and file sharing and print services are also important topics and will be included in this proposal. Each of these characteristics will have an impact on the overall infrastructure of the company.

The recommendations made are based on research data and the requirements of your company. They will both save your company money and improve your company in the long run. With the Windows Server 2012 deployment your company will be set up for success with the newest technologies.

New Features of Windows Server 2012

The new features of Windows Server 2012 that WAI can take advantage of are:

· Server management: A console that allows system administrators to have a view of all their servers and the health of them in one location. It also allows the system administrators access to all the tools required for daily management. This will make the job of the system administrators at your company a little easier.

· Server Core: As mentioned later in the paper windows server 2012 allows you to the option to switch between a server core installation and a GUI installation. Server core is a minimal installation that uses a command line to manage the server. It will protect your network by reducing the attack surface, require less management and be more reliable. If you need the GUI to manage an application you can switch to the GUI to manage it and then switch back to the server core when you are done.

· Data Deduplication: Disk space can be expansive and most of the time hard to come by. This feature will allow you to reduce your storage needs by getting rid of duplicate copies of files and just saving one copy of the file.

Deployment and Server Editions

The general rule for how many servers a company should have is for every 10 employees there should be a server. With the company stating that they will be starting with 90 people I think it is safe to assume they plan on growing in the near feature. To leave some room for the growing company the total number of servers that will be needed is 10. There will be 6 located at the Los Angeles office and 4 located in the New York office. Each server requires a license so we will have to purchase 10 licenses.

The roles that will be combined are DHCP and DNS, file and print services on one of the New York servers. All servers will have Windows Server 2012 installed on it. Since there was no mention of any virtualization needs we are going to install the Essentials edition on all servers. This will give the company Simple administration, no virtualization rights and 25 accounts per server (Lowe, 2012).

With Windows 2012 you can switch between the full installation, Server Core and MinShell whenever you want. The full installation comes with the full graphic interface Windows Server has always had. Server Core comes with a minimal command line/Windows PowerShell interface. MinShell comes with the core OS installed with the ability to run basic GUI administrative tools such as Server Manager or the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Computer Management snap-in. We will start out with a full installation to make sure that everything gets configured to your liking. After we have had a chance to run it and fix anything that needed fixing we can switch all servers to Server Core to make them more secure, reliable and reduce the amount of management required (Deuby, 2013).

The servers will be deployed in the following locations with the following roles. The servers are deployed in this manner to provide fault tolerance and availability to every application that each site might need.

Server	Roles	Location
Server1	AD primary	Los Angles
Server2	AD Secondary	Los Angles
Server3	DHCP primary & DNS primary	Los Angles
Server4	Application Services & WDS	Los Angles
Server5	File & Print services	Los Angles
Server6	DHCP secondary &Web services	Los Angles
Server7	AD RODC	New York
Server8	DHCP & DNS secondary	New York
Server9	File & Print services	New York
Server10	Web services & Application services	New York

All of the servers and operating systems will be deployed using WDS (Windows Deployment Services) to make the installation process smoother. WDS not only will save the company money but will also dramatically reduce the number of man hours required for the installation and the chances of mistakes happening. To do this we will use a standalone server with WDS installed on it. By using Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM) to create an answer file we will be able to use windows Setup to install Server 2012 and all settings listed in the answer file (Microsoft, 2013). Deploying these servers would take approximately 3 days and require 2 system administrators.

Active Directory

Active Directory is the backbone of every organization. A crash of your AD could cause loss of productivity, excessive man hours to troubleshoot and rebuild and loss of data. With that in mind we want to make sure that we have enough domain controllers set up for fault tolerance.

We will deploy three Active Directory servers. The two main domain controllers will be located at the Los Angeles office and the RODC will be located at the New York office. The RODC is a read only domain controller that will provide active directory services without the security risk. The RODC will create a fault tolerance so if both of the main office DCs fail the data will still be available on the RODC. If the RODC fails the data will still be available on the two AD servers in the main office. Each AD will have a dedicated server for increased performance. In order for replication to occur we will first create the sites for the AD domain controllers at both sites. Then the subnet needs to be created for both sites. Now we can create a site link that will connect the two sites so replication can occur. Active Directory Sites and Services tool will be used to configure the WAN link to connect the two LANs.

The AD organizational units will be organized first by site then by departments. Each of the following departments will have its own organizational unit, Executives, Accounts and Sales Department, Creative, Media and Production Department, Human Resources and Finances and IT. GPOs will be created and applied to each OU and then linked to active directory. Along with having their own folder each department will have permissions assigned to their folder to make sure that only authorized users have access. The main system administrator will have access to all folders so they can manage permissions. Deployment and setup of active directory will take approximately 4 hours with one system administrator.

DNS and DHCP

DHCP hands out IP addresses to clients and is essential for connecting to the internet. Because DHCP are so important we will configure for fault tolerance and load balancing. The DHCP scope design will involve 2 DHCP servers at the Los Angles site and 1 DHCP server at the New York site. All of the DHCP servers will be put into failover load balance mode. All of the DCHP servers will be configured in load balance mode. With this set up if one server fails the other will take over. If they are all working properly then they will share the load balance. A scope with the address range of 192.168.1.2-192.168.1.110 will be created.

DHCP reservations will be used for all servers within both sites so they will get the same IP address every time. This will speed up the response time from the server and make sure that users will not have any issues finding the servers. The lease times will be in the default 8 day increments to ensure that there will be plenty of IP addresses available at all times. Deploying the DHCP servers should take approximately 3 hours with two system administrators.

DNS servers map domain names to IP addresses. If DNS were to fail the users would have a hard time connecting to any websites. There will be one server located at each site. By having one server at each site the chances that both will go down at the same time is low. This will provide fault tolerance and thus making sure that the clients will have access to websites. Using an internal private domain the DNS name space design will include la.wai.localhost as the parent and ny.wai.localhost as the child. Split DNS will be set up with two different scopes. One for the internal DNS records and one for the external DNS records. These scopes will be hosted on the same DNS server. This will keep the information on the internal DNS server secure from issues such as foot printing. To set up these scopes policies need to be created and implemented so each name resolution request that is sent is evaluated against the policies on the DNS server. If the server interface on which the query has been received matches any of the policy, the associated zone scope is used to respond to the query (Microsoft, 2015). Deploying and configuring the DNS servers would take approximately 4 hours with two system administrators.

Applications Services

Applications will be deployed using group policy. Using group policy the applications will be installed a lot faster and with fewer errors. First we have to create a shared folder and put the MSI file into the shared folder. Next we create a GPO and add all the computers or users that we want to deploy the application to. We will choose to assign the application to the clients so we know that everyone has access to it. Now we can update the GPO to finish the process.

Software applications can boost productivity in your business and save you time and money. Because the company is just starting out and relatively small I recommend starting off with a few of the basic applications and adding more as needed The applications that will likely be needed are: Google Chrome to allow access to the internet, Kaspersky Small Office Security 4.0 for antivirus protection, QuickBooks accounting software for the accounting department and Microsoft office to create documents, spread sheets and power points. Application services can be installed in approximately 5 hours with one administrator.

File and Printer Sharing

There will be a total of two file servers and two print servers deployed between the two sites. One file server and one print server for each site. We will enable the file and printer sharing feature on all four of the servers. By having two file servers and two print servers we can ensure that files and printers will be available at all times with fault tolerance. The file servers can be deployed in approximately 1 day with two administrators.

We will start out with five shares created with SMB share quick for the following departments, Executives, Accounts and Sales Department, Creative, Media and Production Department, Human Resources and Finances and IT. Since some departments will want their data to remain private from other departments we will enable file and printer sharing with NTFS permissions to restrict access to each of the shares. As a best practice administrators will assign the least amount of access needed to each user to do their job. Access-based enumeration will be enabled for all users except the administrators. This will allow users to see only the folders that each user has access to. Shares can be created in about 4 hours with one administrator.

Distributed file system or DFS will be used to organize the shared resources on the network. With DFS employees at both sites will be able to access shared folders with each other. DFS Namespaces will be used to enable you to group shared folders that are located on different servers into one or more logically structured namespaces. DFS Replication will be used to enable you to efficiently replicate folders across multiple servers and sites (Microsoft, 2013).

FSRM or File server resource manager will be used to manage the quotas and all data stored on the file servers. Quotas will be created for each department using the quota template. To start out each user will get a set amount based on their needs such as 500 MB each. Soft quotas will be set so they won’t lose the ability to save data if they are over their limit but will still be notified when they are at 95% of their storage capacity. To remind users that they are nearing their limit notification limits will be set to the default. If any special circumstances or changes need to be made later the quotas can be changed. Quotas are important because otherwise employees will be free to use as much disk space as they want. FSRM will also be used to create storage reports for the administrators so they know can watch the trends and know when the storage is reaching its capacity. For file screening management I would create a file screen for executable files saved to the server. Executable files should only be saved by administrators because they alter the system. Also I would set email notifications to the administrators if any unauthorized files were saved. FSRM can be configured in approximately 2 hours with one administrator.

The print servers will be managed using the print management console. The print server will be set up with V4 printer drivers so that we will not have to install the print drivers on all of the clients. V4 printer drivers will also make sharing the printers a lot easier. We would deploy the print servers using group policy so that we can make sure that each user or group has access to the printer in their office. Print servers can be deployed in about 5 hours with one administrator.

Man power/scheduling estimates

Each section was given an estimate of approximately how long it would take to complete the task. Overall I estimate the total job to take about 2 weeks with 3 administrators on the job.

Conclusion

Each of the above topics are important in their own way but as a whole they will make your business smoother to run. Windows Server 2012 has a good amount of new features that will appeal to your users and administrators. With the standard edition being deployed to all the servers your company will have the latest technology available. Active Directory is the backbone of every organization and has been set up in a way that will make it highly reliable. DHCP and DNS are essential for connecting to the internet and will keep your company productive. Applications will be used to increase productivity for the users. The file and print servers will make saving or retrieving files easier and printer to network shared printers a breeze. With the recommendations in this proposal your company will start out on the right foot.

References

Deuby, S. (2013, March 1). Windows Server 2012 Deployment. Retrieved from Windows IT Pro: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-server-2012/windows-server-2012-deployment

Lowe, S. (2012, July 6). Microsoft announces four Windows Server 2012 editions: What you need to know. Retrieved from TechRepublic: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/microsoft-announces-four-windows-server-2012-editions-what-you-need-to-know/

Microsoft. (2013, November 13). DFS Namespaces and DFS Replication Overview. Retrieved from TechNet: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj127250.aspx

Microsoft. (2013, October 20). Windows Setup Scenarios and Best Practices. Retrieved from TechNet: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825163.aspx

Microsoft. (2015, May 12). Split-Brain DNS Deployment Using Windows DNS Server Policies. Retrieved from TechNet Blogs: http://blogs.technet.com/b/networking/archive/2015/05/12/split-brain-dns-deployment-using-windows-dns-server-policies.aspx