Phase 1: Budgeting, Procurement and Testing 1-University Network An email account and Internet access through an existing network is required.
A computer capable Internet web browsing and downloading operating system images and burning them onto DVD is required.
With a budget in hand, itemize hardware required. Locate vendors and obtain quotations on pricing.
Working with your existing organizational procurement systems, purchase the required hardware.
Ensure that goods received are complete, and store in a secure place.
6-Testing
Connect each computer to a monitor, keyboard, mouse and network. Power on and ensure it boots the installed operating system (typically an OEM version of Windows) and establishes a gigabit speed connection to the Internet.
You will need an internet domain name (we use "blueprint.org") in order to set up Google Sites.
Wiki, calendar and e-mail hosting off-site allows you to get started with essentials without having your own infrastructure set up first.
9-Hiring
Look for motivated undergraduate students with some interest in Unix command line, capable of self-learning and not afraid of asking questions while troubleshooting.
10-Google Docs
Comes with Google Sites. Embedding Google Docs spreadsheets into Google Sites wiki pages can provide instant and accessible information tracking systems.
11-Systems Wiki
Organize a wiki to support your computer infrastructure setup including an embedded inventrory control spreadsheet, a request tracking interface, and web pages with your own configuration details, instructions and copies of config file contents.
Organize your embedded spreadsheet with computer names, serial numbers, MAC addresses, IP addresses, installed licenced software and hardware specifications.
An inexpensive gigabit router can be transformed by a BIOS update to support advanced network configurations such as virtual LANs (VLANs).
Experience in OS configuration comes from some trial and error, noting which settings work best and saving configuration files in the Systems Wiki.
15-Route VLANs
The router is programmed to provide separate virtual LANs that will segregate network traffic for internal and external use.
16- LDAP Test VLAN
Setting up a minimal functional LDAP server in test VLAN that supports certificate authentication
Setting up replicate Web server and FTP servers and enable Load Balancing between them.
Configure a funtional Nagios server in a test VLAN that monitors itself.
Configue servers for backup and source code version control in another test VLAN.
| Adding samba support for LDAP sever so that it can authenticate windows machines.
Configuring nagios to monitor a wide variety of systems.
Setting up smbldap-tools to manage users and groups in the directory
Configure client machines to authenticate through ldap server.
Configure nagios remote monitoring on systems with/out compiling environment
Different Unix machines will require separate configuration details, for example to support LDAP, Amanda and Nagios.
Windows machines can be configured to authenticate against LDAP and Samba can provide file sharing capabilities.
The advanced load balancing required to have redundant authentication LDAP servers.
Production load balancer configuration where the separate load balancers are set to behave as a redundant pair.
Checklists should be organised on the Systems Wiki so that any new computer added to the network can be properly configured at a glance. Here you ensure your wiki has all the information you need for the next major step.
Reinstall the network from scratch and your Systems Wiki instructions. Here, the real IP addresses are assigned and the complete network is reinstalled from scratch.
This step will confirm that your instructions on the Systems Wiki are sufficiently detailed and helsp erase any configuration mistakes that may have crept in from the learning phase.
Now the system is ready to add external RAID array storage for real data backup. This server is set up carefully with rules so that authenticated users can access the network from external computers. Following the deployment checklist, each workstation can be installed (or re-installed) on the network with the appropriate authentication, backup and monitoring clients. A version control system can be loaded up with source code libraries, such as the NCBI C++ toolkit.. With the production load balancers and IP addressing scheme in place, now you can organize redundant Web or SOAP servers, their content and updating. Redundant FTP servers can be configured, secured and added to your external network.
38-Deploy Bioinformatics Data Warehouse (Optional)
Any other internal servers or services may be added to provide further functionality. Users can be added to the LDAP system and have single-sign in access. Projects can now be supported with a complete, scalable infrastructure. |