Nt1310 Unit 1 Lab 1

Speed, availability, and reliability are vital for a successful network infrastructure in terms of productivity and user experience. When first configuring this lab, I had to make the decision of whether or not to use one server to run all of the services or if the load should be distributed amongst multiple machines. I decided to go with the later, having a separate server hosting the wiki, another providing monitor services, and yet another acting as the DHCP, DNS and AD controller. While the last three were not required in the scope of this lab, I wanted to set up my initial network in a scalable manner, and this was the best solution for future growth. Distributing the services across multiple machines helps to reduce the processing that each box is required to do in order to fulfill requests. This ultimately reduces latency and ensures that each service has the maximum amount of system resources to operate. Having services distributed also minimizes areas of outage if a machine were to go down. If all services were to be running on a single server and that server goes down, the entire network would be affected. In the current configuration if one server goes down, all other network services will remain available. …show more content…
In the future, load balancing should be implemented in order to spread the processing across multiple servers providing the same services such as DHCP. Introducing load balancing will allow performance to increase, as there will be multiple servers capable of handling requests and fulfilling them in the most effective way. Load balancers will also act as backup servers for their respective services because if the primary machine goes down, the secondary device can take over and the network can remain operational. The following services should be included in load balancing: DHCP, DNS, and