Case Study: City Power & Light

Overview

City Power & Light is a large provider of electrical services for residential and business customers throughout Europe.

The company purchases electricity from large power-producing companies, as well as from small wind-energy providers, such as local farmers and ranchers.

Physical Locations

The company’s main office is located in Amsterdam. The company has three branch offices in the following locations:

• Berlin
  
• Brussels
  
• Paris
  

Each branch office has two or more satellite offices in the region. The number of satellite offices and the number of users in each office is shown in the following table.

Planned Changes

The company has experienced rapid growth in the past 12 months, and continued growth is anticipated. It is critical to business that the company provides reliable, uninterrupted service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To meet these demands, the company wants to implement a Windows Server 2003 environment.

Business Processes

The organizational structure of the company is shown in the Organizational Structure exhibit.

The Amsterdam office and each branch office have its own IT staff. The majority of the IT staff is at the Amsterdam office. There is no IT staff at the satellite offices. The IT staff at the branch offices support their respective satellite offices.

Regional customer support is provided by the branch offices and satellite offices.

The company uses a mission-critical application named App1 that monitors the power network and detects any failures. When failures are detected, App1 automatically sends detailed information about the power failure to the nearest available field technicians. All users within the company have access to App1. App1 logs on to the App1 database by using a shared user account. The App1 database handles security within the database.

Directory Services

App1 runs on UNIX servers at the Amsterdam office and the branch offices. Each UNIX server has its own security accounts database.

Each office uses a standard user account and password for all servers in that office. Network administrators in each office know the user account and password combination. Network administrators in each office work independently, but company- wide decisions are made at the Amsterdam office.

Currently, the company does not use Windows domain structure.

Network Infrastructure

Each office uses a switched 100-Mbps Ethernet network. All client computers run Windows XP Professional.

The company uses its own private leased lines to connect the branch offices and most of the satellite offices. Some satellite offices are connected to the nearest branch office by using ISDN lines. The company wants to reduce telephone costs of these satellite offices by minimizing network traffic through the ISDN lines. The company uses VPN connections over the Internet as a backup to connect the different offices.

Problem Statements

The following business problems must be considered:

• A service-level agreement states that the company must resolve power failures within one day. Currently, the company cannot guarantee this requirement. Last year, there were more than 30 power failures that could not be resolved within one day. The primary cause of the delay in resolution was that the company could not identify where the problem occurred.
  
• Another service-level agreement states that the IT department must guarantee an available bandwidth of 28 Kbps to ensure adequate bandwidth for App1. Currently, the available bandwidth decreases every month, and it is uncertain how long the company can continue to guarantee this requirement. The available bandwidth is shown in the Available Bandwidth exhibit.

• The company is experiencing problems with the confidentiality of customer information. This is occurring because the data is not centrally managed and the security settings are inadequate.

Chief Executive Officer

To ensure that customers of City Power & Light receive the most reliable service possible, we want to invest in upgrading App1 to a new application named NewApp. Power failures are inevitable, but if we quickly detect the problem and identify the source, we can restore power more quickly.

Chief Information Officer

Data from App1 is now saved in different locations. I am concerned about who has access to the data and how to reconstruct the data in the event of a disaster.

Network Administrator

Currently, we perform our own administration at each office. All network administrators will work together to replace App1 with NewApp. Because NewApp will be centralized, we are concerned that a failure at the Amsterdam office will affect the availability of our monitoring infrastructure.

Most important to us is the ability to monitor the state of the power network. When a failure occurs in the power network, we must detect it immediately.

Customer Service Representative

Sometimes customers call in to report a power failure two or three times for the same failure. Each time we have to ask the customer for the same information about the power failure. I want to be able to view what the customer reported the first time, and not have to ask for the same information each time the customer calls in.

Business Drivers

The following business requirements must be considered:

• As City Power & Light changes its infrastructure, all offices must share a common namespace: cpandl.com.
• Availability of the monitoring infrastructure and customer support must be improved.
• The company will replace App1 with a new application named NewApp. NewApp is a multitier application a shown in the NewApp Architecture exhibit.

• The company wants customers to be able to receive detailed information about power failures by using the telephone. Customer service representatives need to have detailed real-time information about the power failures, so they can inform customers about the duration of power failures.
• Each branch office must be able to maintain account policies that meet its unique national legal requirements.

Organizational Goals

The following organizational requirements must be considered:

• Upgrades of bandwidth are discouraged. However, upgrades of bandwidth can be permitted if justified.
• There are no plans to open more offices in the near future. However, the new environment must allow for future company growth.
• The company anticipates a 50-percent increase in the number of customers over the next two years.

Security

The following security requirements must be considered:

• Security of NewApp must be Active Directory integrated.
  
• DNS servers will be administered only by network administrators from the Amsterdam office.
  
• Network administrators must have Full Control permissions for NewApp.
  
• Internal users must be able to access information about customers and power failures. Customers must be allowed to access only public information.
• A complete power failure in one location must not affect other locations.
  
• Network administrators should only be allowed to access NewApp database servers by using smart card authentication. However, network administrators must be able to log on to users’ computers to fix problems without using a smart card.
• Computers that have smart card readers installed must automatically get the NewApp management tools installed.

Customer Requirements

The following customer requirements must be considered:

• NewApp must be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  
• Client applications that connect directly to NewApp must use the NetBIOS name of NewApp.
  
• To minimize WAN traffic, the branch offices need to use their local resources as much as possible.
  
• Wind-energy providers must be able to see how much electricity they have delivered. These providers should be able to connect to NewApp by using the Internet.

Active Directory

The following Active Directory requirements must be considered:

• City Power & Light must achieve better control of resources.
  
• The company must ensure that data can be recovered in the event of a disaster.
  
• Replication latency between sites must be minimized.
  

Network Infrastructure

The following infrastructure requirements must be considered:

• To improve customer service, information from App1 databases in all locations must be consolidated in the NewApp database.
• The number of services at the satellite offices must be kept to the absolute minimum.
  
• Client computers must always obtain a valid IP address, even when a DHCP server is not available for 24 hours.
• Field technicians must be able to connect directly to the NewApp database from their portable computers by using a remote connection. They will connect to the nearest branch office when they have to make a remote connection.

Users

The following user requirements must be considered:

• All users must have Microsoft Office and NewApp automatically deployed on their desktop computers. Network administrators at the branch offices must be able to decide which components of Office get installed at their locations.
• Resetting user passwords will be delegated to each user’s manager. All customer service representatives need to be able to reset the passwords of the wind-energy providers.

QUESTION NO: 1
You need to evaluate whether the currently available network bandwidth is adequate to run NewApp. Which three actions should you perform? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose three)

A. Use a debug version of NewApp to collect information about NewApp.
B. Use Performance Monitor to collect data about the saturation of each WAN link.
C. Use Network Monitor to analyze the data that is transmitted over the network for App1.
D. Install SNMP on all computers that are connected to App1 to obtain information about App1.
E. Build a test environment for NewApp to analyze how much bandwidth is required for NewApp.

QUESTION NO: 2
You need to ensure that there is adequate bandwidth available to meet the service-level agreement requirements. Which action or actions should you perform? (Choose all that apply)

A. Upgrade all WAN lines in six months.
B. Upgrade all WAN lines prior to implementing NewApp.
C. Analyze the cause of a peak in network usage in February.
D. Analyze network usage characteristics for NewApp. Based on these results, create an upgrade plan for the WAN lines.

QUESTION NO: 3
You need to ensure that the network administrators are able to administer the NewApp database servers. Which two actions should you perform? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose two)

A. Create an organizational unit (OU) for all users who log on to any of the NewApp servers.
B. Create an organizational unit (OU) named NewApp Users for the NewApp users.
C. Create an organizational unit (OU) named NewApp Servers for the NewApp servers.
D. Create a Group Policy object (GPO) for the NewApp Users OU to enforce the use of IPSec.
E. Create a global group for all NewApp servers. Add this group to the NewApp Servers OU.
F. Create a Group Policy object (GPO) for the NewApp Servers OU to enforce the use of smart cards.
G. Use the account properties to force all users who have to log on to the NewApp servers to use smart cards.

QUESTION NO: 4
You are designing a strategy for migrating the UNIX user accounts to Active Directory.
Which three actions should you perform? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose three)

A. Import the user accounts as inetOrgPerson objects.
B. Import the user accounts into Active Directory by using the Ldifde command-line tool.
C. Export all user accounts from the UNIX servers to a text file.
D. Export all user accounts and their passwords from the UNIX servers to a text file. Encrypt this file to achieve extra security.
E. Assign random passwords to each user object, and securely distribute the password to the users.
F. Create the same strong password for each user object, and require users to change their passwords at first logon.
G. Instruct users to use the same name and password as they used on the UNIX servers.

QUESTION NO: 5
You are designing a site topology to meet the business and technical requirements. What should you do?

A. Increase the replication interval between sites,
B. Use SMTP as the transport protocol for replication.
C. Create site links to represent the physical topology.
D. Disable the Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC) and manually configure site replication.

QUESTION NO: 6
You are designing a NetBIOS name resolution strategy for all computers in all offices. What should you do? To answer, drag the appropriate name resolution component or components to the correct location or locations in the work area.




QUESTION NO: 7
You are designing a strategy to optimize the DNS name resolution for the satellite offices that connect to the branch offices by using ISDN lines. What should you do?

A. Use caching-only DNS servers at these satellite offices.
B. Configure a Hosts file for all client computers at these satellite offices.
C. Configure a DNS server to use WINS forward lookup at these satellite offices.
D. Place a DNS server with secondary zones of all domains at these satellite offices.

QUESTION NO: 8
You are designing the Active Directory infrastructure to meet the business and technical requirements. You run ADSizer, and find that it provides a solution that contains only one domain controller for Amsterdam. What should you do?

A. Place at least two domain controllers in Amsterdam.
B. Configure the domain controller as a bridgehead server.
C. Configure the domain controller as a global catalog server.
D. Distribute the users among sites in ADSizer and recalculate the number of domain controllers.

QUESTION NO: 9
You are designing a DHCP solution to meet the business and technical requirements. What should you do?

A. Increase the default lease time on all DHCP servers.
B. Split all address ranges across multiple DHCP servers.
C. Configure duplicate scopes on at least two DHCP servers.
D. Force client computers to obtain an IP address from Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA).