Task Regional Gardens Ltd is a company that runs a number of related gardening enterprises. It has a large display garden that it opens for public inspection a number of times a year. These...

1 answer below »
Task

Regional Gardens Ltd is a company that runs a number of related gardening enterprises. It has a large display garden that it opens for public inspection a number of times a year. These enterprises include the Regional Gardens Nursery which sells plants and garden supplies to the public, and Regional Garden Planners which provides garden advice, design and consultancy services.


Regional Gardens Ltd has a small data centre at its main site in Bathurst where the company’s servers and data storage is located. The company has the following server infrastructure:



  • 2 x Active Directory domain controllers on Windows Server 2008 R2, (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 140GB HDD);

  • 3 x SQL Server 2003 database servers on Windows Server 2003 (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-5 array); 1

  • 1 x Exchange 2007 email server on Windows Server 2008 R2 (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

  • 4 x Windows Server 2003 File and Print servers (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

  • 2 x Red Hat Enterprise 5 Linux servers running Apache and TomCat (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 16GB RAM, 140GB HDD).


This infrastructure has not been updated for some time and the Regional Gardens Board is concerned that a full upgrade may now cost them more than it is worth. The Board is now considering moving some, or all, of their current infrastructure into the Cloud. The Board sees this as a strategic move to future-proof the company.


Regional Gardens has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 70 garden design, horticultural and support staff that work on different projects for clients in New South Wales. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them.
Your task is to:



  1. Prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the Regional Gardens board. Your briefing should:


    1. Explain the main concepts of Cloud Computing and why you think that a move to the Cloud could be good for Regional Gardens;

    2. Explain some of the Cloud Architectures that you think would be useful for Regional Gardens to use as part of their Cloud infrastructure. This explanation should also briefly discuss how the current Regional Gardens infrastructure could be replicated or replaced in a Cloud deployment.

    3. Each slide in the briefing must also include speaking notes in the notes section to explain the slide, and all images used in the briefing should be referenced. (20 marks)



  2. One of Regional Gardens’s first undertakings is to provide all their staff with the ability to access office automation, such as email, word processing and spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed on a customer’s site in the field. The Regional Gardens board is very concerned to learn about the critical issues, other than cost, that may affect the supply of Cloud based office automation to their staff. You will need to prepare a report on the best way to provide office automation for Regional Gardens. Your report should:


    1. Provide Regional Gardens with TWO different approaches to providing office automation to their staff;

    2. Outline the major benefits and issues with each approach;

    3. Provide a summary of your advice to this company along with your recommendation about which option to choose. Your report should be no longer than 2 pages. (20 marks)



  3. Regional Gardens has a single data centre in Bathurst which contains the following infrastructure:


    • 2 x Active Directory domain controllers on Windows Server 2008 R2, (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 140GB HDD);

    • 3 x SQL Server 2003 database servers on Windows Server 2003 (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-5 array);

    • 1 x Exchange 2007 email server on Windows Server 2008 R2 (2 x Xeon 3.6GHZ, 8GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

    • 4 x Windows Server 2003 File and Print servers (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB RAID-1 array);

    • 2 x Red Hat Enterprise 5 Linux servers running Apache and TomCat (2 x Xeon 2.8GHZ, 16GB RAM, 140GB HDD).



    1. Regional Gardens is considering initially moving its Web infrastructure to a public Cloud, but they are unsure of whether they should migrate to an IaaS or PaaS solution. You are to write a report for the Regional Gardens board that:


      1. Describes the difference between infrastructure provided using an IaaS provider and a platform provided by a PaaS provider in a public Cloud. You will need to discuss the critical differences, issues and factors, other than cost, that Regional Gardens will have to consider in choosing to migrate their existing Web infrastructure to either an IaaS or a PaaS service provider. Your report should take no more than two pages. (30 marks)





  4. Regional Gardens is also considering whether to use PaaS or SaaS to provide services to its employees. Regional Gardens has deployed Microsoft SharePoint 2010 from its data centre as a collaboration and document management tool for its 70 staff. The SharePoint 2010 instance has been extensively customised to suit Regional Gardens needs and also runs Project Central, their Project Management tool as a separate application from within SharePoint. All employees have the Microsoft Office 2010 suite of office automation products installed on their respective desktops or laptops. Regional Gardens would like to move its SharePoint 2010 instance to the cloud to make it more accessible, particularly to its users working at customer’s sites. Regional Gardens want you to report on:

    1. What are the major differences between the models IaaS, PaaS and SaaS? (5 marks)

    2. Recommend the model that you consider most appropriate for this service and discuss why this model is the most appropriate for the SharePoint service. (10 marks)

    3. What are the most likely problems that Regional Gardens will encounter with the model that you recommend? How would you advise Regional Gardens to deal with these issues? (15 marks)

    4. Your report for this question should be no more than 3 pages.



Rationale

This assessment will cover the following outcomes:



  • Be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different Cloud Computing Architectures to meet a set of given business requirements;

  • Be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a Cloud Computing delivery model;

Marking criteria


Marking Criteria






Assessment Rubric























































QuestionHDDICRPSFL
1. Cloud Computing Concepts presentationClear, comprehensive description of cloud computing concepts, architectures and their uses, critical points identified & discussed,

Detailed description of cloud computing concepts, architectures and their uses, many critical points identified & discussed,

Good description cloud computing concepts, architectures and their uses, some critical points identified & discussed,Adequate description of cloud computing concepts, architectures and their uses, some critical points identified

Incomplete or inadequate description of cloud computing concepts, architectures and their uses, few or no critical points identified

2. Office automationClear, comprehensive description of infrastructure differences, critical points identified & discussed,Detailed description of infrastructure differences, critical points identified & discussed,Good description of infrastructure differences, some critical points identified & discussed,Adequate description of infrastructure differences, some critical points identifiedInadequate or incomplete description of infrastructure differences, none or few critical points identified
3. Migration to Public CloudClear & comprehensive description of advantages and issues with move to selected model with excellent reasoningDetailed description of advantages and issues with move to selected model with good reasoningGood description of advantages and issues with move to selected model with some reasoningAdequate description of advantages and issues with move to selected model with limited reasoningInadequate or incomplete description of advantages and issues with move to SaaS model with little or no reasoning
4. SharePoint Hosting ModelClear & comprehensive of model choice, benefits and drawbacks with excellent reasoningDetailed description of model choice, benefits and drawbacks with good reasoningGood description of model choice, benefits and drawbacks with some reasoningAdequate description of model choice, benefits and drawbacks with limited reasoningInadequate or incomplete description of model choice, benefits and drawbacks with little or no reasoning
APA referencingUp to 5 marks may be deducted for not providing or following the proper APA 6th edition style of referencing.
Note that the guide for APA referencing is provided in the Resource Section of the ITC561 Interact site.

Spelling, Grammar, PresentationUp to 5 marks may be deducted for poor presentation, spelling and grammar

Presentation


Your reportMUSTbe presented in MS Word format. Your report should:



  • Use Calibri, or a similar font, in 11 or 12 point type.

  • All diagrams and images are to be embedded in the document. Diagrams and images that are suppliued separately will not be marked.

  • All text should be left-justified.

  • Each page must have a header or footer with your name and student number.

  • Page numbers must be shown in the footer of each page, except on the title page.


Reports are marked and feedback attached using a MS Word based tool. Reports that are submitted in PDF format will be re-formatted to Word format in order to be marked. Allowances will not be made for any loss of information, diagrams or images as a result of the re-formatting.

Answered Same DayMar 20, 2020ITC561Charles Sturt University

Answer To: Task Regional Gardens Ltd is a company that runs a number of related gardening enterprises. It has a...

Saurabh answered on Mar 27 2020
148 Votes
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION    2
TECHNOLOGY SELECTION    2
BACKUP DESIGN    4
DR DESIGN    4
INFORMATION SECURITY    5
DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURES    5
WHY USE SaaS?    6
WHY USE PaaS?    6
REFERENCES    7
INTRODUCTION
The company Regional Gardens Ltd uses expensive physical servers for the purpose of domain infrastructure, databases, email infrastructure, file and print. Moreover, the servers are Tomcat application and Linux based apache. Physical desktops are used end user computing and routine operations of the company. The company used four Xeon 3.6 GHz with 8 GB RAM and four Xeon 2.8 GHz servers with 4 GB RAM. For applications based on Linux, they use two Xeon 2.8 GHz servers, each with 16 GB RAM. Thus, the company uses a lot of physical desktops and the infrastructure cost goes up. The physical infrastructure is posing a lot of limitations. Thus, the management should shift its concentration to virtualisation technologies and cloud computing technologies that would decrease the hardware costs and provide provisions for faster processing and day – to – day operations (Heydarian, et al., 2015). In this report will elaborate on Virtual Technology and infrastructure useful for the organisation. We will consider the overall design considerations, the proposed design, backup design and DR design.
TECHNOLOGY SELECTION
Regional Gardens Ltd. can opt for VMWARE virtualisation technology. The company can consider ESXi6 servers with compatible vcenter servers. The design is described below.
The company can consider investing in ESXi6.5 with only one datacentre. Single resource pool shall be needed for infrastructure servers. Because, the company will now have only single datacentre, all the physical servers needs will be addressed and converted into ESXi6 servers. The virtual infrastructure now made would have 4 Xeon servers each of 3.6 GHz. The Xeon servers will now be converted to ESXi6 servers. Now a domain cluster will be formed by 2 Xeon 3.6 GHz ESXi6 servers. The cluster so formed will be kept in the resource pool.
· 2 Xeon 3.6 GHz ESXi6 servers Exchange Cluster
· 2 Xeon 2.8 GHz ESXi6 servers Database Cluster
· 2 Xeon 2.8 GHz ESXi6 servers File and Print Cluster
· 2 Xeon 2.8 GHz ESXi6 servers Linux Cluster
· Two...
SOLUTION.PDF
SOLUTION.PDF

Answer To This Question Is Available To Download

Related Questions & Answers

More Questions »

Submit New Assignment

Copy and Paste Your Assignment Here
Have files?