System Infrastructure Design

SkyByte Consulting is a premier provider of Virtualization solutions and technologies.


Recently SkyByte won an RFP for a major suburban park district near Chicago. SkyByte successfully beat out four other Chicago IT firms with our design and project pricing. The park district had approximately thirty aging physical servers well beyond their effective service life. Their server room consisted of two 42U racks full of old server equipment. SkyByte proposed a four server VMware vSphere Cluster connected to a NetApp 2040 SAN. Cisco switches were chosen and NFS was utilized for the storage area network. SkyByte architected a secure DMZ along with multiple production internal networks. The project had the added benefit of centralizing all of the organizations data within the new NetApp SAN. This further improved the organizations disaster recovery options.

SkyByte installed the new VMware vSphere cluster and virtualized all the old servers from P to V. The virtualization candidates were Microsoft Exchange, four Microsoft SQL database servers, file and print servers, application servers and many F5 load balanced web servers.  Upon completion of the project all old server equipment was removed, and a complete 42U rack was removed from the room. 84U U’s of space were reduced to 15U’s. Power and cooling requirements for the data room were reduced by more then 50%. The park district gained fault tolerance, and high availability; the system is designed to continue business operations with a two host failure. The organization also gained much more flexibility within their system to meet the public's needs. Other benefits have been much better performance logging and reporting. The organization has acknowledged system performance was dramatically improved across all servers.

SkyByte has been working with Virtualization technologies since 2003. Over the last several years we have focused our infrastructure practice on server virtualization and server consolidation through the use of VMware vSphere Clusters and standalone ESX and ESXi hosts. He have aligned ourselves with NetApp and EMC for storage solutions. SkyByte has found VMware’s virtualization product suite to be vastly superior to the competing server Virtualization software such as Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. Specifically the levels of refinement, flexibility, reliability and support are much better with the VMware products.

Contact us today for a free evaluation of what Virtualization can do for your organization. 847.574.6256 or info@skybyte.com

San Fransisco, CA: Microsoft on Tuesday provided another glimpse at changes coming with the next-generation of Windows software that powers most of the world's computers.

Microsoft is making major improvements to a key Windows Explorer file management program to enhance how it interacts with the coming Windows 8 operating system, according to Windows division president Steven Sinofsky.
 
"Windows 8 is about re-imagining Windows, so we took on the challenge to improve the most widely used desktop tool in Windows," Sinofsky said atop a blog post detailing Explorer modifications.
 
"Windows Explorer is a foundation of the user experience of the Windows desktop and has undergone several design changes over the years, but has not seen a substantial change in quite some time," he added.
 
A control "ribbon" for commands was added to make them more easily accessible to people other than "power users" familiar with Windows Explorer shortcuts.
 
Engineers set out to "return Explorer to its roots as an efficient file manager and expose some hidden gems" in the form of handy commands many people may not know, according to Alex Simmons of the program management team.
 
Microsoft in June provided the first sneak peek at the successor to Windows 7, a next-generation operating system designed to work on both personal computers and touchscreen tablets.
 
Sinofsky demonstrated some of the features of the operating system code-named "Windows 8" at a D9 technology conference hosted by All Things Digital.
 
"Laptops, slates, desktops -- all can run one operating system," Sinofsky said.
 
"Windows 8" builds upon many of the features in Microsoft's latest mobile operating system for smartphones, Windows Phone 7, including the use of touch "tiles" instead of icons to launch and navigate between applications.
 
Microsoft has promised to reveal more features of Windows 8, which uses Internet Explorer 10 as a Web browser, at its developers conference in Anaheim, California, opening on September 13th

Nothing new has been released yet regarding new Windows Server 8 information and if Active Directory upgrades will need to be to unlock the potential for Windows 8 on current corporate network infrastructure.

• Assess your network infrastructure and decide if you need to acquire a new server or just require some server upgrades. Remember Exchange 2010 only runs on 64-bit versions of Server 2008 and R2. This also means you will need a 64-bit processor in your server.
• Do you currently use virtualization in your network infrastructure? If so you can virtualize your exchange server or servers using Microsoft Hyper V Server 2008,  Vmware Vsphere Installation, and other server virtualization systems.
• Download and read the Planning for Exchange 2010 and also the Deploying Exchange 2010 information on Microsoft's Technet site.
• Does your current network infrastructure design support an edge configuration, or will you be just installing a single server setup?
• If you are upgrading you can only upgrade from Exchange 2007 R2. This may require you to upgrade your exchange 2007 server to R2. If your running Exchange 2003 you will have to perform a migration.
• If your running an older network infrastructure like Server 2000 and earlier, it will require an Active Directory upgrade.
• Do your current email security solutions support Exchange 2010?
• When you finalize your plan also perform a business continuity risk assessment focusing on electronic communications for your business, and update your information Technology disaster recovery plan to include the new Exchange 2010 mail server or cluster. These are very important parts of the process that many neglect to do.

DirectAccess is a new technology in Windows 7 that eventually may replace traditional VPN installation solutions such as Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol/Internet Protocol Security (L2TP/IPsec), and Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP). DirectAccess is an automatic connectivity solution that allows clients running Windows 7 to connect seamlessly to the corporate intranet the moment they establish any Internet connection. The adoption of DirectAccess will not occur overnight. Organizations have to make major changes to their network infrastructure, adopt new server and client technologies, and fully change over form IPv4 to IPv6.

DirectAccess is an always connected, IPv6, IPsec VPN connection. If Configured properly a computer or laptop is able to connect to the Internet, and direct access automatically connects the machine to their corporate network. DirectAccess differs from other VPN solutions in the following ways:

• The connection process is automatic and does not require user to do anything. The DirectAccess connection process starts from the minute the computer connects to an active Internet connection. To the user it appears that they are always connected to the company's intranet, whether they are sitting in the office or they are in their hotel room on a business trip. Traditionally, users must initiate VPN connections to the corporate intranet manually.

• DirectAccess is bidirectional, with servers on the intranet being able to interact with the client running Windows 7 in the same way that they would if the client was connected to the local area network. In many traditional VPN solutions, the client can access the intranet but servers on the intranet cannot communicate with the client. DirectAccess provides administrators with a more granular way of controlling what intranet resources are available to remote users and computers. Administrators can integrate DirectAccess with NAP to ensure that remote clients remain up to date with virus definitions and software updates. Administrators can also apply network security policies to isolate servers and hosts.

As you can see DirectAccess is a very useful technology for the corporate user. Although it will require most companies to upgrade their network infrastructure, the simplification of the users involvement compared to a typical VPN installation might outweigh the work involved to implement DirectAccess.

SkyByte is a security based service and solution provider dedicated to the delivery of secure data communications, risk management, data integrity and corporate privacy. SkyByte offers a wide array of IT consulting services such as the design and maintenance of firewalls, VPNs, LANs, WANs, VMware server virtualization, messaging systems and secure wireless networks.
 

An essential part of a proper Business Continuity Management Plan evolves monitoring the environmental conditions inside the businesses data center or computer room. Ensuring optimum temperature and humidity conditions will ensure maximum equipment life. This provides the the best equipment reliability, provides IT ROI to the business and reduces the risk of equipment failure.  

For the past several years, SkyByte has installed and utilized an IT room monitoring system from AVTECH to monitor and alert key personnel of environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity level, air flow, and much more.  The system connects into your existing network infrastructure providing a web page to view real time status of all sensors connected.  The system can also send alerts via email and other communication methods if a problem or sudden climate change occurs. This allows the IT staff or consultants to take immediate action before its too late.

Inside the IT equipment room of a client, SkyByte has installed the AVTECH system, which is a 19" rack mountable 1U control board with connections for various sensors and accessories.  With this installation, we have 2 temperature sensors, a flood detection sensor, a power loss detection sensor and an airflow sensor.   

The two temperature sensors provide us real time air temperature and humidity levels in the rear of the main server rack and the outlet vent of an air conditioning unit.  If we happened to lose air conditioning, the room temperature could climb significantly in just a matter of minutes, posing a major threat to the valuable equipment.

The flood sensor detects and alerts of any liquid that comes in contact with a cable around the perimeter of the room.

The power sensor plugs into an AC outlet and with detect and alerts of a loss in power.

The airflow sensor alerts if the air conditioning system unexpectedly stops running.


Relying on this system provides both SkyByte and the client piece of mind that the environment surrounding their crucial IT equipment is in check.

SkyByte is well versed in Business Continuity Management Plans & Disaster Recovery Solutions as well as wide array of IT consulting services. Call or email us today for more information.


SkyByte is a security based service and solution provider dedicated to the delivery of secure data communications, risk management, data integrity and corporate privacy. SkyByte offers a wide array of IT consulting services such as the design and maintenance of firewalls, VPNs, LANs, WANs, VMware server virtualization, messaging systems and secure wireless networks.