Case Study for Network Management

Case Study for Network Management

The Network Services Director has set you the problem of producing a detailed five year plan for the Manchester Data Centre supported by diagrams of the network infrastructure at the data centre both initially and at the end of the plan. You are to analyse the case study in order to identify the network related needs of Pennine Railways and the factors limiting the implementation of a solution. These issues will be critically discussed before proposing a solution to the problem. Afterwards, the solution will be critically evaluated.

Part (a)
Critically analyse the case study provided and identify the network related needs of the company and the factors limiting the implementation of a solution. Critically discuss these issues in relation to change management and appropriate standards such as BS27000 and FCAPS.

Part (b)
Propose a solution to the problems of the case study (five year plan and diagrams). The solution should demonstrate conformity to appropriate standards and highlight areas where the existing solution could be improved using up-to-date technology, hardware and software

Part (c)
Critically evaluate your solution based on the requirements of the company, the conformity to standards and the five rules of networking, and any research you have conducted for this task.

Further marks are available for presentation and use of bibliography.

 

Guidance

Summarise your findings in a report. The report should be 2800 words in length and be written in a formal style, including an introduction and bibliography, consistent layout, appropriate technical language and evidence of proofreading.
Correctly Harvard Referenced.

Any diagrams, references and headings are not included in the 2800 word limit but tables are. Identify the word count of your report at the end of the report.
Case Study for Network Management – Pennines Railways

This case study is based around the fictional train service provider Pennines Railways.

Pennines Railways provide train services to many of the towns and cities in the north of England. The Network Services department and IT Services department provide seventy software applications to staff at over 150 sites including HQs, stations and depots. The network infrastructure spans the whole railway system allowing trains to be monitored in real time, delays and performance to be calculated and reported to external organisations and tickets to be booked in advance by train users.

Current system
The Pennines Railways network architecture is based around two data centres and all sites are connected by a variety of in-house managed network links.

100 Mb leased lines are used between the two data centres to ensure there is consistent network bandwidth across all business critical applications, regardless of hosting location. This level of bandwidth is also required to support the new phone system, which will share this data connection. A minimum of 2Mb leased line is used to connect through to either data centre from major stations and offices. All service level agreements with providers are at 80% availability.

Smaller sites and stations use SDSL broadband connections to access the corporate network via either data centre – these are a minimum of 512k. These broadband connections are considered a cost-effective solution but do suffer from problems including latency, jitter and packet loss.

All main 3rd party data sources are connected by a leased line through to each data centre. Other suppliers, dependent on application use a variety of methods to connect e.g. VPN, Web-based applications using SSL/TLS version 2.

Home workers and smaller suppliers can connect directly to support systems via VPN remote access.
Manchester Data Centre
Manchester Data Centre contains three Cisco 2691 routers that connect to the seven large stations in the area, Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, Bolton, Blackpool, York Station, Leeds Station and Manchester Victoria as well as two external organisations at Salford and Birmingham where information regarding rail performance and timetabling is submitted. These stations each have a Cisco 1700 router and are connected using 2Mb leased lines. Bandwidth congestion to these sites are shown below.

Connection Bandwidth Congestion (%)
Manchester Piccadilly 74
Liverpool Lime Street 42
Bolton 35
Blackpool 44
York Station 62
Leeds Station 66
Manchester Victoria 72
Salford 95
Birmingham 89

Manchester Data Centre is connected to the Manchester HQ, York Data Centre and York HQ via 100Mb ATM leased lines (congestion 15%, 55%, 12% respectively). The data centre also has a Cisco PIX firewall connected to a 10 Mb ADSL/SDSL line connecting to the Internet (congestion 72%). This line supports 50% share of the ninety two smaller stations and sites (max 10 PCs per site) which have ADSL/SDSL broadband connections and use VPN (York Data Centre services the remaining 50%) and also mobile clients also accessing through VPN.

Manchester Data Centre core infrastructure is made up of Cisco 3550s Routers, VPN3000 series concentrators and HP4000 & HP8000 switches.

Manchester Data Centre houses thirty seven servers.
• 1st Domain Controller
• 2nd Domain Controller
• Microsoft Exchange frontend server (email)
• Microsoft Exchange backend server (email)
• Failover SMTP gateway (email)
• File Storage
• Print server
• Antivirus and Windows Server Update Services distribution server
• Cubic FasTIS servers x 4 (ticket issuing system for use in rail booking offices)
• Citrix Application Server x 5
• Citrix Terminal Server x 9
• Citrix Web Portal server
• Microsoft SharePoint server
• Nexus Alpha server (staff messaging service)
• Trust server (monitors train movements for punctuality)
• Genius server (for controlling the allocation of trains)
• IRMA server (Staff Rostering Software for Train Operators)
• Whatsup server (network monitoring)
• Solarwinds Cirrus server (network configuration manager)
• HP Switch and Wireless Management server
• Redundant server X 2

 

IT Services Department 5 Year Plan Impact on Network Services
Current Year
• Asset Tracking Project (new server will be provided by ITSD needs to be added to network)
• SQL server (new server will be provided by ITSD needs to be added to network)
• VOIP trials
Year 1
• Upgrade of Citrix to newer version (current version is v4)
• VoIP rollout
• Wireless at major sites
Year 2
• Upgrade Domain Controllers, look to roll out newer version of Windows (current Windows XP) on client PCs.
• Replace all DL140 and DL360 servers.
• Replace Cisco 3550s Routers at Manchester Data Centre.
• VoIP installation at all stations.
Year 3
• Review of Corporate Security Software
• Upgrade File storage at Data Centres (consider backup implications)
• VPN Hardware – Replace VPN3000 series concentrators in Manchester Data Centre and York Data Centres as they go end-of-support. Current replacements are Cisco ASA500 series appliances.
Year 4
• LAN Upgrades – Increase backbone links between switches to 10Gb and provide Gigabit to desktop at core sites.
Year 5
• Review of application environment and server hardware at this time.

 

Meeting future needs
The organisation is looking to replace the Cisco 2600 and 1700 routers.
The versions of Whatsup and Solarwinds Cirrus are now quite old and need to be updated or replaced with other software.
PIX firewalls will need replacing next year, each can also be used to test and implement Intrusion detection.
Replace end of life switches HP4000 & HP8000 next year, use 8000 as failover if possible.

 

 

 

Task 2 (Word limit: 2800 words)

Scenario

The Network Services Director has set you the problem of producing a detailed five year plan for the Manchester Data Centre supported by diagrams of the network infrastructure at the data centre both initially and at the end of the plan. You are to analyse the case study in order to identify the network related needs of Pennine Railways and the factors limiting the implementation of a solution. These issues will be critically discussed before proposing a solution to the problem. Afterwards, the solution will be critically evaluated.

Part (a)
Critically analyse the case study provided and identify the network related needs of the company and the factors limiting the implementation of a solution. Critically discuss these issues in relation to change management and appropriate standards such as BS27000 and FCAPS.

Part (b)
Propose a solution to the problems of the case study (five year plan and diagrams). The solution should demonstrate conformity to appropriate standards and highlight areas where the existing solution could be improved using up-to-date technology, hardware and software

Part (c)
Critically evaluate your solution based on the requirements of the company, the conformity to standards and the five rules of networking, and any research you have conducted for this task.

Further marks are available for presentation and use of bibliography.

 

Guidance

Summarise your findings in a report. The report should be 2800 words in length and be written in a formal style, including an introduction and bibliography, consistent layout, appropriate technical language and evidence of proofreading.
Correctly Harvard Referenced.

Any diagrams, references and headings are not included in the 2800 word limit but tables are. Identify the word count of your report at the end of the report.

 

 

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