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 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). The management of the company is concerned about the increasing costs of power and cooling to operate their data centre. The management also wants to increase the reliability of the services, reduce their desktop support loads and accelerate desktop provisioning to the staff. They are also investigating whether they should employ a virtualisation technology in their data centre to enhance data centre efficiency while keeping costs low. They are considering whether they should also use virtualisation to provide an updated desktop environment to their staff. Your Report You are to consider how to implement a virtual infrastructure for the company and prepare a report for the board of Regional Gardens. Your report should include: 1. A one page executive summary, 2. Your proposed virtual infrastructure for the data centre. This is to include: a. Which virtual technology you recommend to be deployed, and b. Your reasons for that recommendation. 3. An analysis of how virtual applications and desktops, or both, will be delivered to the user’s desktops using the new infrastructure. 4. Your designs for: a. Data and configuration backup, and b. Disaster recovery. 5. Any Information Security changes required and the steps required to implement / monitor these changes. Rationale This assessment item is designed to assess the understanding and use of some advanced topics in virtualisation, analytical skills, planning and design capabilities of students under some predefined requirements. In particular, the assessment covers the following learning objectives: • be able to communicate the importance of different virtualisation technologies for x86 and Unix based systems; • be able to evaluate which virtualisation technology should be used in a given set of requirements; • be able to identify and evaluate the requirements to create a virtual infrastructure; and • be able to analyse the requirements for management of a virtual infrastructure. Marking Criteria The following criteria will be used while assessing each question of your report. Question Task Marks 1. Executive summary 10 2a. Technology selection 10 2b. Reasoning 20 3 Desktop analysis 15 4a. Backup design 15 4b. DR design 15 5 InfoSec changes 15 Total 100 Marking Rubric The following rubric will be used when assessing each component in this assignment. Question HD DI CR PS FL Executive summary A complete summary of the solution and main points of the report. A thorough explanation of the main points of the report. A detailed explanation of the main points of the report. An adequate explanation of the main points of the report. An inadequate or incomplete summary of the main points of the report. Technology selection A concise and well-designed proposal for a new virtual infrastructure, with references A thorough design proposal for a new virtual infrastructure, with references A detailed design proposal for a new virtual infrastructure, some references An adequate design proposal for a new virtual infrastructure, some references An inadequate or incomplete design proposal for a new virtual infrastructure Reasoning A thorough discussion of the reasoning behind the infrastructure design, with references A detailed discussion of the reasoning behind the infrastructure design, with references A good discussion of the reasoning behind the infrastructure design, some references An adequate discussion of the reasoning behind the infrastructure design, some references An inadequate or incomplete discussion of the reasoning behind the infrastructure design Desktop analysis A complete analysis with detailed suggestions for deploying desktops and applications to users, with references A thorough analysis with detailed suggestions for deploying desktops and applications to users, with references A good analysis with detailed suggestions for deploying desktops and applications to users, some references An adequate analysis with detailed suggestions for deploying desktops and applications to users, some references A complete analysis with detailed suggestions for deploying desktops and applications to users Backup plan design A complete description of the backup plan for the new infrastructure, with references A thorough description of the backup plan for the new infrastructure, with references A detailed description of the backup plan for the new infrastructure, some references An adequate description of the backup plan for the new infrastructure, some references An inadequate or incomplete description of the backup plan for the new infrastructure DR plan design A complete description of the DR plan for the new infrastructure, with references A thorough description of the DR plan for the new infrastructure, with references A detailed description of the DR plan for the new infrastructure, some references An adequate description of the DR plan for the new infrastructure, some references An inadequate or incomplete description of the DR plan for the new infrastructure InfoSec changes A complete description of the InfoSec changes needed, with references A thorough description of the InfoSec changes needed, with references A detailed description of the InfoSec changes needed, some references An adequate description of the InfoSec changes needed, some references An inadequate or incomplete description of the InfoSec changes needed Referencing & Presentation Marks will be deducted for not following the given report format (see below) as well as for poor presentation, spelling and/or grammar mistakes. Marks will also be deducted for NOT following the proper APA style referencing. Referencing should be accurately documented using APA 6th edition and must include both in-text citations and a Reference List. (Note that the guide for APA referencing is provided in the Resource section of Interact site) Presentation Report Format/Presentation The report should be submitted as MS Word (preferably) or pdf document. Please do not submit *.zip or *.rar or any other format and also do not submit multiple copies of the report. Please use A4 page size with Times New Roman font of size 12. Following should be included as minimum requirements for the report structure. Title of Report This section should have proper title of the report. References You must cite references using APA referencing style to all material you have used as sources for the content of your work