Upgrading Small Business Client and Server Infrastructure E-LEET Solutions. E-LEET Solutions is an information technology consulting firm

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1 Thank you for considering E-LEET Solutions! E-LEET Solutions is an information technology consulting firm that specializes in low-cost high-performance computing solutions. This document was written as a reference for small businesses to explore non-tradional solutions for their technical needs. E-LEET Solutions understands that small businesses may have a hard time affording new hardware and support which is why we provide solutions designed to reuse as much existing hardware as possible while still maximizing performance gains. Thin Clients and Microsoft Terminal Services Most organizations today have accepted the idea of completely replacing their outdated workstation computers with brand new ones and then dispose of the old hardware. Unfortunately this is a very expensive way of keeping your computer hardware up to date not just in a dollar sense but time wise as well. We at E-LEET Solutions have a better solution for keeping your generic workstations up to date, its called thin clients. Thin clients are simply diskless terminals that are used to connect to a remote server and use its resources. This removes all performance bottlenecks from the client machine and puts the entire computing load on the server hardware. All software, computations, and network requests are processed by the server and not the thin client. With this kind of architecture, a system administrator only

2 needs to be concerned with installing software, updates, and security patches on one machine instead of an entire network of machines. As mentioned before thin clients can be very inexpensive. The reason for this is because old stand-alone workstations can be turned into thin clients. All that is required is a boot-rom compatible NIC (network interface card) to be installed. Most NICs support bootroms. However, if a NIC is found to be incompatible, E-LEET Solutions recommends an Intel PRO 1000 NIC (DC193A -V15 ) be installed for the best compatibility and scalability. The client machine needs to be configured to contact a remote server machine upon boot, so it can load the information needed (usually a very compact version of Linux) to connect to the terminal server. Once that's done the machine is ready to connect to a terminal server. Thin clients also provide many benefits on the management side of things through centralized security, update, and software management. By using a thin client / server scheme a system administrator can install software on the server and, licenses permitting, have it accessible by every thin client that connects to that server. Since the server is the only computer that is vulnerable to viruses it's the only machine that needs security and virus updates. No more going from machine to machine running updates and virus scans. Period. To better manage the thin clients, E-LEET Solutions suggests the use of 2X ThinClientServer. 2X ThinClientServer provides a web-based

3 GUI that can be used for creating, updating, and managing thin clients. This tool can be very helpful for people who are not familiar with Linux and feel more comfortable with a GUI. It is compatible with hand built and retail thin clients which could allow an organization to replace their possibly loud and unattractive thin clients with compact commercial thin client hardware. One major concern that is fairly common in organizations considering switching to a thin-client infrastructure is loss of functionality, or more specifically put, loss of the Microsoft Windows environment. This is where the thin client solution truly shines. Microsoft Windows 2003 Server provides a service called Terminal Services. Terminal Services allows a remote machine to connect to the server and create a Windows session that is hosted on the server. When the client closes their connection to the server their session continues to run meaning that they can connect to the server, work, close the session, come back later and open the session, and resume the task they started as if they had left their computer running and logged in. The use of Terminal Services also provides a layer of fault tolerance by housing all user data on the server where it can be backed up. Their session is also stored on the server so in the event of a power failure the client machine may turn off but their session is still running on the battery backed-up server thus causing no loss of data.

4 Terminal Services also allow a user to have a roaming desktop that follows them from machine to machine. This means that if a person sets up their Windows preferences a certain way, their desktop environment will be the same no matter what machine they are using to log into the terminal server. This can be especially helpful because a person's machine no longer needs to follow them around if their desk location changes or if someone wants to show somebody what they are working on at their workstation they can log into their session and show them at any client machine capable of logging into the Terminal Server. Performance is another very important aspect of a thin client solution. Thin client performance is only limited by the server hardware and network connection. If a server is having troubles with performance while serving a number of thin clients one could either upgrade the server or add an additional terminal server to form a server cluster. Thin clients are a cost effective way of upgrading a computer network with improved security, scalability, and low maintenance. For more information on thin client / server infrastructure visit our website.

5 Server and Storage Hardware Average consumers know very little about the benefits of adding a professionally installed server to their business. Even small businesses can excel by having a server added to their current network. First of all a server is a computer that acts as a hub for all other computers in an area. The hub can control , printing, Internet access, backup, and file sharing capabilities. Figure 1: A simple example of how a server behaves. The server will essentially save time, money, offer protection, increase collaboration and greatly increase overall efficiency. Time is always an issue for business. Just as the simple equation says, time does equal money. With a professionally installed server the

6 business owner will not have to worry about setting up multiple computers, and installing all of the required software on each machine. E-LEET Solutions will come to a business, set up the server, and ensure that all other machines are correctly configured for server access. Money will also be saved with the decision to add a server. Individual work computers will not have to have expensive hardware installed. The processing load will be handled by the server not the individual machines. Software can also be installed server side, making the option of the cheaper client licensing a possibility. An increase in data protection is a viable benefit from a client / server infrastructure. Important documents and secure information can be stored on the server in various encrypted methods. Johnny, the disgruntled employee, is going to have more trouble destroying and sabotaging important documents. Kicking over and burning a file cabinet full of documents is much easier than gaining access and damaging a server. As you can see a server is the right option for any business size. E-LEET Solutions has several packages available to make choosing the right solution easier for the consumer. The process starts with E-LEET Solution s Silver Package. Small business owners require a server for peak efficiency. E-LEET Solutions has a package especially developed for the small business. The Silver package includes Sun Microsystems s Sun Fire X2100 Extra

7 Large configuration server. This server features an AMD Opetron 175 Dual Core processor, two gigabytes of memory, and one on-board 7200 RPM 80 gigabyte hard drive. Again, E-LEET Solutions looks to Hewlett- Packard for a disk array. The HP Modular Smart Array 30 with 600 GBs of storage is used for the Silver Package. Smart Array 30 is fully upgradeable for 2 TBs. Total cost of the Silver Package is $15,000 installed. Gold packages are built for the medium to large sized businesses. Businesses with over 50 employees fall in this category. The Gold Package is based on the Sun Fire v40z Extra Large configuration. Sun Microsystems s v40z features four Dual-Core AMD Opteron 880 processors. The processor is supported by an impressive 1 MB L2 Cache. Server memory can be increased up to 16 Gigabytes. Onboard server disk space for the v40z is provided by two 146 GB 10,000 RPM hard drives. Impressive as the v40z seems, it is not much without a disk array attached to it. E-LEET Solutions has chosen the HP Modular Smart Array 500 G2 to pair with the server. It features a 500 GB minimum configuration and the ability to go 6TB with additional hard drives. The disk array will be configured in the RAID 5 configuration. Total cost for the Gold Package is $45,000 with installation included. The task of choosing a server and storage package can be a difficult one. E-LEET Solutions is always available to help. With

8 five years of experience, you can rest easy in knowing that E-LEET Solutions will provide an excellent quality to all installation projects. Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Microsoft Windows Server 2003 is a robust and secure operating system. It is scalable, and easy to manage, and would provide all of the functionality that businesses need. Services would include shared web space, file sharing, and thin client support. All of these would be beneficial for an academic or corporate setting. It is becoming more important for employees to understand how websites are created and hosted as more and more businesses increase the products and services that they buy and sell online. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 is more secure than previous versions of Microsoft server products. This is because instead of being wide open, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 has most services and ports disabled by default. It also has a Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) that can help you decide which serviced and ports should be enabled to give you the best security and functionality. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 provides easy support for configuring small and large storage area networks (SAN). The service is called SMfS (storage manager for SANs). SANs are quickly becoming popular and are starting to compete with desktop attached storage devices. By using a SAN, data can be centrally stored and protected

9 on a server, but to the user it is no different that data stored on a local hard disk. Thin client computing is also becoming a popular solution. Instead of buying multiple computers, a thin client solution would be multiple people using one computer. The thin client box would only need basic I/O devices, and a NIC. By creating a web space for each user it makes it very easy to publish information in the form of websites to the Internet, and therefore is a very convenient way of informing and communicating with customers and employees. Windows SharePoint Services includes event calendars, contacts, Web links, discussions, issues lists, and announcements. WSS also provides document libraries where users can store and retrieve documents. Putting it Together By implementing a thin client / server infrastructure powered by Windows 2003 businesses can save thousands on maintenance and management costs while still get the fault tolerance and security of more expensive solutions. For more information on thin client / server infrastructure please visit our website at