System Administration and IT
Infrastructure Services. Week 6: Final
Project Solved Correctly
You're doing systems administration work for Network Funtime Company. Evaluate their current
IT infrastructure needs and li
...
System Administration and IT
Infrastructure Services. Week 6: Final
Project Solved Correctly
You're doing systems administration work for Network Funtime Company. Evaluate their current
IT infrastructure needs and limitations, then provide at least five process improvements and
rationale behind those improvements. Write a 200-400 word process review for this consultation.
Remember, there's no right or wrong answer, but make sure to provide your reasoning.
Software Company:
Network Funtime Company is a small company that builds open-source software. The company
is made up software engineers, a few designers, one person in Human Resources (HR), and a small
sales team. Altogether, there are 100 employees. They recently hired you as a system administrator
to come in and become their IT department.
When a new person is hired on, the HR person purchases a laptop for them to do their work. The
HR representative is unfamiliar with what type of hardware is out there; if a new employee requests
a laptop, the HR person will purchase the cheapest option for a laptop online. Because of this,
almost everyone has a different laptop model. The company doesn't have too much revenue to
spend, so they don't order laptops until someone gets hired at the company. This leads to a few
days of wait time from when someone starts to when they can actually work on a laptop.
The company doesn't label their computers with anything, so if a computer is missing or stolen,
there's no way to audit it. There's no inventory system to keep track of what's currently in the fleet.
Once a computer is purchased, the HR person hands it to the new employee to set up. Software
engineers that use Linux have to find a USB drive and add their preferred distribution to the laptop.
Anytime someone needs something from HR -- whether it's office related or tech related -- they
email the HR representative directly.
When a new employee gets a machine, they're given logins to use cloud services. They get a
personal orientation with HR to make sure they can login. This requires the HR person to block
off a few hours for every new employee. If an employee forgets the login to their machine, they
have no way to retrieve a password and they have to reimagine their machine. Employees don't
have a strict password requirement to set for their computers.
The company currently has many of their services in the cloud, such as email, word processors,
spreadsheet applications, etc. They also use the application, Slack, for instant communication. ✔✔
Scenario 2:
You're doing systems administration work for W.D. Widgets. Evaluate their current IT
infrastructure needs and limitations, then provide at least five process improvements and rationale
behind those improvements. Please write a 200-400 word process review for this consultation.
Remember, there's no right or wrong answer, but make sure to provide your reasoning.
Sales Company:
W.D. Widgets is a small company that sells widgets. They're mostly made up of salespeople who
work with lots of clients. You've taken over as the sole IT person for this company of 80-100
people.
When HR tells you to provision a machine for a new employee, you order the hardware directly
from a business vendor. You keep one or two machines in stock, in case of emergency. The users
receive a username that you generate for them. You then give them an orientation on how to login
when they start. You currently manage all of your machines using Windows Active Directory. The
company uses only Windows computers. When a new computer is provisioned, you have to install
lots of sales-specific applications manually onto every machine. This takes a few hours of your
time for each machine. When someone has an IT-related request, they email you directly to help
them.
Almost all software is kept in-house, meaning that you're responsible for the email server, local
machine software, and instant messenger. None of the company's services are kept on the cloud.
Customer data is stored on a single file server. When a new salesperson starts, you also map this
file server onto their local machine, so that they can access it like a directory. Whoever creates a
folder on this server owns that folder and everything in it. There are no backups to this critical
customer data. If a user deletes something, it may be lost for everyone.
The company generates a lot of revenue and is rapidly growing. They're expecting to hire hundreds
of new employees in the next year or so, and you may not be able to scale your operations at the
pace you're working. ✔✔
You're doing systems administration work for Dewgood. Evaluate their current IT infrastructure
needs and limitations, then provide at least five process improvements and rationale behind those
improvements. Please write a 200-400 word process review for this consultation. Remember,
there's no right or wrong answer, but make sure to provide your reasoning.
Non-profit Company:
Dewgood is a small, local non-profit company of 50 employees. They hired you as the sole IT
person in the company. The HR person tells you when they need a new computer for an employee.
Currently, computers are purchased directly in a physical store on the day that an employee is
hired. This is due to budget reasons, as they can't keep extra stock in the store.
The company has a single server with multiple services on it, a file server, and email. They don't
currently have a messaging system in place. When a new employee is hired, you have to do an
orientation with them for login. You're also responsible for installing all the software they need on
their machine, and mapping the file server to their computer. The computers are managed through
Windows Active Directory. When an employee leaves, they're currently not disabled in the
directory service.
The company uses an open-source ticketing system to handle all internal requests as well as
external non-profit requests. But the ticketing system is confusing and difficult to use, so lots of
the employees reach out to you directly to figure out how to do things. In fact, so many things are
difficult to find that employees typically ask around when they have a question.
There are nightly backups in place of the file server. You store this information on a disk backup
and take it home with you everyday to keep it safe in case something happens onsite. There's also
a small company website that's hosted on the single server at the company. This website is a single
html page that explains the mission of the company and provides contact information. The website
has gone down many times, and no one knows what to do when it happens. ✔✔
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