Project Report

[Jason Agress]

I have started working on the project report. Here's what I have so far...much is still in outline format. I think it will be a good use of my time to work on this given where we are in the project timeline. Let me know what you think.

See you all later.

Jason

IT 485 - Capstone

Project Report

Setting & Current Problems
In UMass Boston’s Computer Science Department, users must have access to a diverse range of technological resources. These resources require a variety of systems and processes to support them. Four main ones include authentication, network file storage, desktop deployment, and desktop client management.

Authentication: Users currently have two user accounts - a UNIX (NIS) account and a Windows (Active Directory) account. Having multiple accounts creates confusion among users. For example, differing password policies often lead to passwords being out of sync and hard to remember.

Network File Storage: Users currently have a UNIX-based, NFS home folder that is auto-mounted on UNIX systems and which they are prompted to authenticate to when logging into Windows systems. For UNIX this works fine, but it can be clunky for Windows systems.

Desktop Deployment: The CS department currently has both UNIX/Linux and Windows desktops in the department. Machines are manually imaged with Symantec Ghost and the process requires significant effort, especially if reimaging if frequent.

Desktop Client Management: Windows clients are managed with Active Directory Group Policy, but Linux machines are essentially unmanaged. This poses an issue for Linux clients, which require significant manual intervention to update software, enforce user preferences, etc.

Purpose/Goals
In light of the aforementioned setting and current problems, our primary purpose in this project is to come up with ways to address the CS department’s issues and generally streamline IT processes within the department. This means designing and implementing a unified environment that makes use of integration and automation of services and tasks in order to reduce confusion among system administrators and users, as well as the amount of manual labor required to deploy and manage machines.

Some more specific technical goals include the following:

• Integrated Linux/UNIX/Windows environment
• Central Directory Service for all clients and services
• Access to shared network resources from all clients (i.e. home directories)
• Automated deployment of Windows and Linux clients
• Management of Windows and Linux clients
• Little or no cost

Plan/Workflow

Components/Technologies

• DHCP
• DNS
• Gateway/Routing
• Directory Services (AD)
• Deployment Server (WDS)
• Windows Management (Group Policy)
• Linux Management (Puppet)

Network Topology
[diagram]

router.domain.edu - 10.10.10.1
ad.domain.edu - 10.10.10.10
wds.domain.edu - 10.10.10.20
fileserver.domain.edu - 10.10.10.30
puppet.domain.edu - 10.10.10.35
users.domain.edu - 10.10.10.36

VMware Workstation virtual network
10.10.10.0/24


Setup Procedure/Step-by-Step

1. Create a Gold Master Ubuntu Server Virtual Machine Image
2. Create a Gold Master Windows 2008 Server Virtual Machine Image
3. Create a Virtual Linux Router
4. Create a Virtual Active Directory Server
5. Enable Group Policy in Windows 2008
6. Create a Virtual Linux NFS Server with Samba
7. Create a Virtual Windows Deployment Server
8. Deploy a Virtual Windows 7 Desktop using Windows Deployment Server
9. Create a Virtual Puppet Master Server Puppet Client
10. Deploy a Virtual Ubuntu Linux Desktop using Windows Deployment Server and Puppet

[Ken Situ]

Tom 

its ken, try one of the following key for the vmware workstation, it should work.

MV4YN-0L38Q-2ZK60-XUA7K-AAZ18 

JC6AP-D4H0P-TZ131-4A2QM-8CNP7 

0U6UU-6AJDL-RZTK9-230Q0-8ARJQ 

JG2TD-DJL95-FZZZ8-DU1NH-33GH7

NA6XH-FFL14-5Z0Q9-G0C70-AA0HP
HA0H9-D03EQ-KZ7P8-T11N6-12P63

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