Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed (20 page)

details are fully sketched out, and the solution designed is as well thought out as possible.

2

Often, the design team has the challenging task of negotiating with the key stakeholders

concerning the final design because not all the staff will get everything they want and

wish for in the project. The deployment team can contain members of the design team,

and these individuals should have training and hands-on experience with the technolo-

gies involved and will have more end-user interaction.

There are certain prerequisites to look for when choosing an independent consultant or

solution provider organization as a partner. Without going into too much detail, the indi-

vidual or firm should have proven experience with the exact technologies to be imple-

mented, have a flexible approach to implementing the solution, and have specialized

resources to handle the different components of the project. No one person can “do it

all,” especially if he gets sick or goes on vacation, so breadth and depth of experience

should be considered. Obviously, the hourly fees charged are important, but the overall

costs, if a firm is willing to commit to a cap or not to exceed a certain price, can be more

important. In the current business environment, it makes sense to invest your time wisely

ptg

in choosing a firm that is very good at what it does, or it might not be around in future

months when your project reaches its critical phases.

Soft skills of the partner are also important because many projects are judged not only by

whether the project is complete on time, on scope, and on budget, but also by the response

of the stakeholders and user community. Communications skills, reliability, and willing-

ness to educate and share knowledge along the way bring great value in the long run.

The Discovery Phase: Understanding the Existing

Environment

Assuming that the previous steps have been taken, the high-level picture of the Windows

Server 2008 R2 upgrade should be very clear by now. It should be clear what the business

and technology goals are from a “50,000-foot view” business standpoint all the way down

to the “1,000-foot” staff level. The components of the upgrade, or the scope of the work,

and priorities of these components should also be identified as well as the time constraints

and who will be on the design and implementation teams.

The picture of the end state (or scope of work) and goals of the project should start

becoming more clear. Before the final design is agreed upon and documented, however, it

is essential to review and evaluate the existing environment to make sure the network

foundation in place will support the new Windows Server 2008 R2 environment.

60

CHAPTER 2

Planning, Prototyping, Migrating, and Deploying Windows Server 2008

R2 Best Practices

It is an important time to make sure the existing environment is configured the way you

think it is and to identify existing areas of exposure or weakness in the network. The level

of effort required will vary greatly here, depending on the complexity and sheer scope of

the network. Organizations with fewer than 200 users and a single or small number of

locations that use off-the-shelf software applications and standard hardware products (for

example, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cisco) will typically have relatively simple configurations.

In contrast, larger companies, with multiple locations and vertical-market custom software

and hardware will be more complex. Companies that have grown through the acquisition

of other organizations might also have mystery devices on the network that play

unknown roles.

Another important variable to define is the somewhat intangible element of network stabil-

ity and performance. What is considered acceptable performance for one company might

be unacceptable for another, depending on the importance of the infrastructure and type

of business. Some organizations lose thousands of dollars of revenue per minute of down-

time, whereas others can go back to paper for a day or more without noticeable impact.

The discovery work needs to involve the design team as well as internal resources.

External partners can often produce more thorough results because they have extensive

experience with network reviews and analysis and predicting the problems that can

emerge midway through a project and become showstoppers. The discovery process will

ptg

typically start with onsite interviews with the IT resources responsible for the different

areas of the network and proceed with hands-on review of the network configuration.

Developing standard questionnaires can be helpful in collecting data on the various

network device configurations, as well as recording input on areas of concern of the

network. Key end users can reveal needs that their managers or directors aren’t aware of,

especially in organizations with less-effective IT management or unstable infrastructures.

Special attention should be paid to ferreting out the problem areas and technologies that

never worked right or have proven to be unstable.

For the most part, the bigger the project, the more thorough the discovery should be. For

projects involving a complete NOS upgrade, every affected device and application will

need to be reviewed and evaluated to help determine its role in the new environment.

If network diagrams exist, they should be reviewed to make sure they are up to date and

contain enough information (such as server names, roles, applications managed, switches,

routers, firewalls, and so on) to fully define the location and function of each infrastruc-

ture device.

If additional documentation exists on the detailed configuration of key infrastructure

devices, such as “as built” server documents with details on the server hardware and soft-

ware configurations, or details on router configurations or firewalls, they should be dusted

off and reviewed. Information such as whether patches and fixes have been applied to

servers and software applications becomes important in the design process. In some cases,

the desktop configurations need to be inventoried if client changes are required. Software

inventory tools can save many hours of work in these cases.

The Discovery Phase: Understanding the Existing Environment

61

Certain documented company policies and procedures that are in place need to be

reviewed. Some, such as disaster recovery plans or service-level agreements (SLAs), can be

vital to the IT department’s ability to meet the needs of the user community.

The discovery process can also shed light on constraints to the implementation process

that weren’t considered previously, such as time restrictions that would affect the window

of opportunity for change. These restrictions can include seasonal businesses as well as

2

company budgeting cycles or even vacation schedules.

Ultimately, while the amount of time spent in the discovery process will vary greatly, the

goals are the same: to really understand the technology infrastructure in place and the

risks involved in the project, and to limit the surprises that might occur during the testing

and implementation phases.

Understanding the Geographical Depth and Breadth

At the same time that data is being gathered and verified pertaining to what is in place and

what it does, connectivity among devices should also be reviewed, to review the logical as

well as the physical components of the network. This information might be available from

existing diagrams and documentation, or might need to be gathered in the field.

Important items to understand include answering the following questions: How are DNS

ptg

and DHCP being handled? Are there VPNs or VLANs in place? How are the routers config-

ured? What protocols are in use? What types of circuits connect the offices: DSL, T1, fiber?

What is the guaranteed throughput or the SLAs that are in place?

Has connectivity failure been planned for through a partially or fully meshed environ-

ment? Connections to the outside world and other organizations need to be reviewed and

fully understood at the same level, especially with an eye toward the security features in

place. The best security design in the world can be defeated by a modem plugged in a

plain old telephone line and a disgruntled ex-employee.

Along the same lines, remote access needs, such as access to email, network file and print

resources, and the support needs for PDAs and other mobile devices, should be reviewed.

Geographically diverse companies bring added challenges to the table. As much as possi-

ble, the same level of information should be gathered on all the sites that will be involved

in and affected by the migration. Is the IT environment centralized, where one location

manages the whole environment, or decentralized, where each office is its own “fiefdom”?

The distribution of personnel should be reviewed and clarified. How many support

personnel are in each location, what key hardware and software are they tasked with

supporting, and how many end users are there? Often, different offices have specific func-

tions that require a different combination of support personnel. Some smaller, remote

offices might have no dedicated staff at all, and this can make it difficult to gather

updated information. Accordingly, is there expansion or contraction likely in the near

future or office consolidations that will change the user distribution?

62

CHAPTER 2

Planning, Prototyping, Migrating, and Deploying Windows Server 2008

R2 Best Practices

Problems and challenges that the wide area network (WAN) design has presented in the

past should be reviewed. How is directory information replicated between sites, and what

domain design is in place? If the company already has Active Directory in place, is a single

domain with a simple organizational unit (OU) structure in place, or are there multiple

domains with a complex OU structure? Global catalog placement should also be clarified.

How is the Internet accessed? Does each office have its own Internet connection, firewall,

router, and so on, or is it accessed through one location?

The answers to these questions will directly shape the design of the solution, as well as

affect the testing and rollout processes.

Managing Information Overload

Another area that can dramatically affect the design of the Windows Server 2008 R2 solu-

tion to be implemented is the place where the company’s data lives and how it is managed.

At this point, you should know what the key network software applications are, so it is

worth having some numbers on the amount of data being managed and where it lives on

the network (1 server? 10 servers?). The total number of individual user files should be

reviewed, and if available, statistics on the growth of this data should be reviewed.

Database information is often critical to an organization, whether it pertains to the

ptg

services and products the company offers to the outside world, or enables the employees

to perform their jobs. Databases also require regular maintenance to avoid corruption and

optimize performance, so it is useful to know whether maintenance is happening on a

regular basis.

Mail databases pose their own challenges. Older mail systems typically were quite limited

in the size of their databases, and many organizations were forced to come up with inter-

esting ways of handling large amounts of data. As email has grown in importance and

become a primary tool for many companies, the Inbox and personal folders have become

the primary storage place for many email users. If the organization uses Microsoft

Exchange for its email system, users might have personal stores and/or offline stores that

might need to be taken into account.

How the data is backed up and stored should also be reviewed. Some organizations have

extremely complex enterprise storage systems and use clustering, storage area networks,

and/or a distributed file system to ensure that data is always available to the user commu-

nity. Sometimes, hierarchical storage processes are in place to move old data to optical

media or even to tape.

An overall goal of this sleuthing is to determine where the data is, what file stores and

databases are out there, how the data is maintained, and whether it is safe. It might also

become clear that the data can be consolidated, or needs to be better protected through

clustering or fault tolerance disk solutions. The costs to the company of data loss or

temporary unavailability should also be discussed.

The Design Phase: Documenting the Vision and the Plan

63

The Design Phase: Documenting the Vision

and the Plan

With the completion of the discovery process and documentation of the results, it should

now be very clear what you have to work with in terms of the foundation the new solu-

tion will be implemented upon. Essentially, the research is all done, and many decisions

2

will now need to be made and documented.

By now, a dozen documents could be written; however, the most important document

that needs to be created is the design document. This document is a log of the salient