Day 2:
[16th March 2020]
Design Objective
---------------------
The biggest determination for moving ahead on a project or not approving it is based on cost. The business wants to know how much it will cost them. Therefore, understanding the budget requirements for consideration becomes very valuable during the design process. There are many ways of doing a network design and going in blind without knowing the budget could prevent possible challenges.
Technical Objective
------------------------
The following objectives are considered within our design as technical requirements:
1. PERFORMANCE: Performance deals with the rate and quality of traffic delivery across a network. Bandwidth and throughput are one of the components that can describe the performance. QoS is another component that
assigns priority to specific traffic on the network. Port buffers and queues also fall into quality of traffic delivery which is often discussed with Congestion Management and Avoidance with QoS.
2. RELIABILITY: Reliability deals with the redundancy and stability of the network. Faults on a network will occur in the form of hardware, software, or human-related failures. Therefore, it’s important to understand how long
can the network be down (the SLA) before a serious impact occurs (e.g. customers leaving). The answer for most cases would be as minimal as possible, less than 1 or 4 hours. Therefore building a network with redundancy is important to consider and construct within network design. However, higher redundancy requirements mean higher costs and complexity.
3. SCALABILITY: Scalability deals with the growth or increase of users, servers, and services on the network. Building a network to accommodate today’s requirements is not good if we don’t understand the requirements and expectations for tomorrow. This is obtained during the requirements gathering.
4. SECURITY: Security provides protection of confidentiality and integrity for users, servers, and services on the network. This may include mandates or regulatory compliances. Much of the best practices focus on this technical objective.
5. FLEXIBILITY: Flexibility has a dual meaning and purpose. The first deals with understanding the potential use of network services and technologies that may be included with the design in the future. For example, maybe the design today does not include VoIP, but it may be included in another 1 or 2 years. Therefore, the design should consider those additions. The second deals with the integration of existing or legacy infrastructure.
6. NETWORK MANAGEMENT: Network Management also has a dual purpose of dealing with Management and Monitoring. Monitoring deals with providing proactive fault management (e.g. monitoring when devices are UP or DOWN, traffic usage), performance management (e.g. using a protocol called NetFlow to view traffic flow conversations and top-talkers), and configuration management (e.g. backing up configuration) so understanding the support model is important.
Solution Objective
-----------------------
We have come up with an organized way to group these technologies and solutions. They are broken down into Network Services and Network Solutions.
A Network Solution would be one of the following:
• LAN, Internet Edge, Remote Access, Cloud Computing, Server Computing, the Client computing
And Network Services would be one of the following:
• Routing & Switching, Security & VPN, IPv6
Locations
------------
Locations deals with where the components on the network reside. The location can be any of the following:
• IDF
• MDF
• Data Center
• Office/Other
• Server Room Cooling
The IDF is a wiring closet that connects back to an MDF room or Data Center.
The MDF is a wiring closet that connects to other IDF rooms including Data Centers. The Data Center is a dedicated room with Data Center components such as racks, cabinets, ladder racks, cooling.
Office/Other locations are where a user's computer/laptop is located such as an office, cubicle, or workspace. Each location that has 1 or 2 ports that are wired back to an IDF, MDF, or maybe a Data Center location.
There can be variations for some of these rooms such as a Lab or training class. A training classroom can be a type of "Office/Other" location. Or a lab can exist in either a Data Center, IDF, or an MDF room. It's based on how the wiring is constructed. Therefore, it's important to understand all of the computer room locations and how everything is wired.
This is information gathered during the requirements phase that makes a difference in defining what the design will eventually look like.
For example, let's focus on a simple LAN design. If there was one computer room location like an MDF wiring closet, then the LAN topology could either be a LAN Collapsed Core or a LAN Core with a LAN Access layer. A LAN Collapsed
Core would be a better choice. However, let's say there is an IDF room where all Office/User/Computer locations are wired to. And the IDF is connected to an MDF room. Well, we automatically know that the LAN topology for this design, at a minimum, would be a LAN Core with a LAN Access. The LAN Core would exist in the MDF and the LAN Access would exist in the IDF.
Server Room facilities involve environmental (e.g. cooling, airflow, power), management (e.g. cabling, labeling), and equipment (e.g. racks, cabinets, trays) elements. These are really designed in itself, but below are best practice facility components that should be considered for any data center deployment
Design Steps
Step #1: Requirements
In the first step of the design process, you will gather all of the general and technical requirements for the design. This will help to understand the business size, the solutions, and services that will be used. It will also determine the level of redundancy, performance, and flexibility desired by the company
Step #2: General Design
Once the requirements have been determined, you will begin with the general design which is focused on the building, the rooms, and wiring where the network /Server equipment will exist. It will also provide standards to follow for the Data Center, Naming, IP Addressing, to VLAN schemas among others. The General Design will follow the technical objective categories to show what objective is being focused on.
Step #3: Solutions
In the third step, for all the solutions determined during the requirements phase (step 1), you will complete the design steps listed for each solution based on the technical objectives listed.
Step #4: Services
Once the solution design and the hardware was been determined, the next step is to complete the design for all services selected from all previous steps based on the technical objectives.
Step #5: Design Options
The final step is to construct multiple design options that can include consolidation, redundancy, different hardware, and/or topologies selecting one of those as your “recommended” option as an engineer
Design Questionnaire
The first step in the design process is to gather all of the requirements that will be used for the network design. These are the general requirements to understand the business requirements, expectations, and any challenges involved. The technical requirements are used to understand the technical objectives that should be considered to the type of traffic that will be used on the network. Then determining all solutions and services that will be used. Follow the steps listed below to get started:
General Requirements
----------------------------
Determine the business requirements by asking the business owners and/or engineers some of the following general questions.
1. What are the business requirements and expectations? - Partially clarified in RFP
2. What are the current challenges experienced today?
3. What kind of traffic and services will be used? booking URL
4. Are there any budgetary considerations?
5. Are there any existing conditions to consider? (e.g. hardware, providers)
6. What is the current support model? (how is your network supported)
7. Who is the primary architect for the network design (if applicable)?
8. What is the business size for the network? Small - RFP
9. What is the number of remote locations? 1-HQ & 2- Branch - RFP
10. What is the number of users for each location? RFP mentioned
11. What is the number of computer rooms in each building?
12. What is the timeframe for completing this design and/or deployment?
After the general questions are completed additional tasks may be needed in order to build the network design by understanding what the business currently has today and how it is setup. It may include one or more of the following:
1. Gather Contact Information
2. Obtain Current Network Documentation (e.g. Network Diagram)
3. Conduct Site Survey (if applicable or approved) for the following:
a. Current Design Topology
b. Locations (e.g. MDF, IDF, Data Center)
c. Existing Conditions (e.g. Hardware, Providers)
d. Current configuration on the network
e. Challenges and/or Issues
f. Performance Measurement
Technical Requirements
-------------------------------
Once the general requirement questions have been determined it’s important to discuss the critical technical objectives for the design and deployment. Most issues and challenges with a network today are due to the result of lack or no
consideration for the technical objectives.
1. What kind of performance and data volume is expected on the network including out to the Internet?
2. What is the expected throughput required?
3. What kind of traffic will be used?
4. What redundancy level desired based on the following?
-Full: Higher costs (double-triple), Higher redundancy, length of downtime (<1 hour to none)
-Partial: moderate costs, Low redundancy, length of potential downtime (2-4+ hours)
-None: no additional costs, no redundancy. Length of potential downtime (4-8+ hours)
5. What applications are more critical to be up and running over other applications?
6. How many users are on the network today and how many are expected to grow in the future?
7. How many servers are on the network today and are expected to be added in the future?
8. Are there any specific compliances (like PCI) that your company must comply with?
9. What solutions and services are anticipated to be added in the future?
10. Who will support the network deployed and how will escalations work?
11. Will there be a low or high amount of Internet web traffic expected? (e.g. personal web-surfing, multimedia, downloads)
12. Will there be a low or high amount of Email traffic expected? (e.g. large attachments sent)
13. Will there be a low or high amount of traffic used for FTP, File services, or batch-related applications?
14. What is the expected utilization? (33%, 50%, or 100%) on the network? (Note: Most will operate around 33% or less)
15. Determine Company security policy for Firewall implementation?
16. Active Directory design requirement?
Design Components to be considered in our Solution
Design Objective
---------------------
The biggest determination for moving ahead on a project or not approving it is based on cost. The business wants to know how much it will cost them. Therefore, understanding the budget requirements for consideration becomes very valuable during the design process. There are many ways of doing a network design and going in blind without knowing the budget could prevent possible challenges.
Technical Objective
------------------------
The following objectives are considered within our design as technical requirements:
1. PERFORMANCE: Performance deals with the rate and quality of traffic delivery across a network. Bandwidth and throughput are one of the components that can describe the performance. QoS is another component that
assigns priority to specific traffic on the network. Port buffers and queues also fall into quality of traffic delivery which is often discussed with Congestion Management and Avoidance with QoS.
2. RELIABILITY: Reliability deals with the redundancy and stability of the network. Faults on a network will occur in the form of hardware, software, or human-related failures. Therefore, it’s important to understand how long
can the network be down (the SLA) before a serious impact occurs (e.g. customers leaving). The answer for most cases would be as minimal as possible, less than 1 or 4 hours. Therefore building a network with redundancy is important to consider and construct within network design. However, higher redundancy requirements mean higher costs and complexity.
3. SCALABILITY: Scalability deals with the growth or increase of users, servers, and services on the network. Building a network to accommodate today’s requirements is not good if we don’t understand the requirements and expectations for tomorrow. This is obtained during the requirements gathering.
4. SECURITY: Security provides protection of confidentiality and integrity for users, servers, and services on the network. This may include mandates or regulatory compliances. Much of the best practices focus on this technical objective.
5. FLEXIBILITY: Flexibility has a dual meaning and purpose. The first deals with understanding the potential use of network services and technologies that may be included with the design in the future. For example, maybe the design today does not include VoIP, but it may be included in another 1 or 2 years. Therefore, the design should consider those additions. The second deals with the integration of existing or legacy infrastructure.
6. NETWORK MANAGEMENT: Network Management also has a dual purpose of dealing with Management and Monitoring. Monitoring deals with providing proactive fault management (e.g. monitoring when devices are UP or DOWN, traffic usage), performance management (e.g. using a protocol called NetFlow to view traffic flow conversations and top-talkers), and configuration management (e.g. backing up configuration) so understanding the support model is important.
Solution Objective
-----------------------
We have come up with an organized way to group these technologies and solutions. They are broken down into Network Services and Network Solutions.
A Network Solution would be one of the following:
• LAN, Internet Edge, Remote Access, Cloud Computing, Server Computing, the Client computing
And Network Services would be one of the following:
• Routing & Switching, Security & VPN, IPv6
Locations
------------
Locations deals with where the components on the network reside. The location can be any of the following:
• IDF
• MDF
• Data Center
• Office/Other
• Server Room Cooling
The IDF is a wiring closet that connects back to an MDF room or Data Center.
The MDF is a wiring closet that connects to other IDF rooms including Data Centers. The Data Center is a dedicated room with Data Center components such as racks, cabinets, ladder racks, cooling.
Office/Other locations are where a user's computer/laptop is located such as an office, cubicle, or workspace. Each location that has 1 or 2 ports that are wired back to an IDF, MDF, or maybe a Data Center location.
There can be variations for some of these rooms such as a Lab or training class. A training classroom can be a type of "Office/Other" location. Or a lab can exist in either a Data Center, IDF, or an MDF room. It's based on how the wiring is constructed. Therefore, it's important to understand all of the computer room locations and how everything is wired.
This is information gathered during the requirements phase that makes a difference in defining what the design will eventually look like.
For example, let's focus on a simple LAN design. If there was one computer room location like an MDF wiring closet, then the LAN topology could either be a LAN Collapsed Core or a LAN Core with a LAN Access layer. A LAN Collapsed
Core would be a better choice. However, let's say there is an IDF room where all Office/User/Computer locations are wired to. And the IDF is connected to an MDF room. Well, we automatically know that the LAN topology for this design, at a minimum, would be a LAN Core with a LAN Access. The LAN Core would exist in the MDF and the LAN Access would exist in the IDF.
Server Room facilities involve environmental (e.g. cooling, airflow, power), management (e.g. cabling, labeling), and equipment (e.g. racks, cabinets, trays) elements. These are really designed in itself, but below are best practice facility components that should be considered for any data center deployment
Design Steps
Step #1: Requirements
In the first step of the design process, you will gather all of the general and technical requirements for the design. This will help to understand the business size, the solutions, and services that will be used. It will also determine the level of redundancy, performance, and flexibility desired by the company
Step #2: General Design
Once the requirements have been determined, you will begin with the general design which is focused on the building, the rooms, and wiring where the network /Server equipment will exist. It will also provide standards to follow for the Data Center, Naming, IP Addressing, to VLAN schemas among others. The General Design will follow the technical objective categories to show what objective is being focused on.
Step #3: Solutions
In the third step, for all the solutions determined during the requirements phase (step 1), you will complete the design steps listed for each solution based on the technical objectives listed.
Step #4: Services
Once the solution design and the hardware was been determined, the next step is to complete the design for all services selected from all previous steps based on the technical objectives.
Step #5: Design Options
The final step is to construct multiple design options that can include consolidation, redundancy, different hardware, and/or topologies selecting one of those as your “recommended” option as an engineer
Design Questionnaire
The first step in the design process is to gather all of the requirements that will be used for the network design. These are the general requirements to understand the business requirements, expectations, and any challenges involved. The technical requirements are used to understand the technical objectives that should be considered to the type of traffic that will be used on the network. Then determining all solutions and services that will be used. Follow the steps listed below to get started:
General Requirements
----------------------------
Determine the business requirements by asking the business owners and/or engineers some of the following general questions.
1. What are the business requirements and expectations? - Partially clarified in RFP
2. What are the current challenges experienced today?
3. What kind of traffic and services will be used? booking URL
4. Are there any budgetary considerations?
5. Are there any existing conditions to consider? (e.g. hardware, providers)
6. What is the current support model? (how is your network supported)
7. Who is the primary architect for the network design (if applicable)?
8. What is the business size for the network? Small - RFP
9. What is the number of remote locations? 1-HQ & 2- Branch - RFP
10. What is the number of users for each location? RFP mentioned
11. What is the number of computer rooms in each building?
12. What is the timeframe for completing this design and/or deployment?
After the general questions are completed additional tasks may be needed in order to build the network design by understanding what the business currently has today and how it is setup. It may include one or more of the following:
1. Gather Contact Information
2. Obtain Current Network Documentation (e.g. Network Diagram)
3. Conduct Site Survey (if applicable or approved) for the following:
a. Current Design Topology
b. Locations (e.g. MDF, IDF, Data Center)
c. Existing Conditions (e.g. Hardware, Providers)
d. Current configuration on the network
e. Challenges and/or Issues
f. Performance Measurement
Technical Requirements
-------------------------------
Once the general requirement questions have been determined it’s important to discuss the critical technical objectives for the design and deployment. Most issues and challenges with a network today are due to the result of lack or no
consideration for the technical objectives.
1. What kind of performance and data volume is expected on the network including out to the Internet?
2. What is the expected throughput required?
3. What kind of traffic will be used?
4. What redundancy level desired based on the following?
-Full: Higher costs (double-triple), Higher redundancy, length of downtime (<1 hour to none)
-Partial: moderate costs, Low redundancy, length of potential downtime (2-4+ hours)
-None: no additional costs, no redundancy. Length of potential downtime (4-8+ hours)
5. What applications are more critical to be up and running over other applications?
6. How many users are on the network today and how many are expected to grow in the future?
7. How many servers are on the network today and are expected to be added in the future?
8. Are there any specific compliances (like PCI) that your company must comply with?
9. What solutions and services are anticipated to be added in the future?
10. Who will support the network deployed and how will escalations work?
11. Will there be a low or high amount of Internet web traffic expected? (e.g. personal web-surfing, multimedia, downloads)
12. Will there be a low or high amount of Email traffic expected? (e.g. large attachments sent)
13. Will there be a low or high amount of traffic used for FTP, File services, or batch-related applications?
14. What is the expected utilization? (33%, 50%, or 100%) on the network? (Note: Most will operate around 33% or less)
15. Determine Company security policy for Firewall implementation?
16. Active Directory design requirement?
Goodness - that's a long posting :)
ReplyDeleteLooks all good - but could you perhaps (very concisely) how this applies to you specific use case: what user groups do you have and what are they doing - and how?
yes Sure, we will do that
DeleteI can't see much recent activity - please just post your progress and you planning/thinking here. It doesn't have to be long postings - keep that for your report. But please post fairly frequent (weekly)
ReplyDeleteSure, Will DO that
ReplyDelete