This lab’s goal was to set up an infrastructure in RLES, create a network for it to run on and install several different services, including monitoring solutions.
Creating the infrastructure inside of RLES allows students to get used to the power of cloud computing and get us attuned to the type of software and infrastructure we could see in the real world. Being able to create, delete, copy and manage virtual machines gives us to the power to create an environment quickly. For example, RLES could be used in the real world to create test environments for new product or application.
The second goal was to create a Local Area Network for all of the hosts to use. Setting up a network in this environment allows hosts to talk to one another …show more content…
Pfsense is open source, which means that it’s free, but also doesn’t have the same amount of support Cisco products would have. If something goes wrong with pfsense, your entire network could go down and you’d have no support. On the other hand, Solarwinds does offer support, but at a cost. Depending on how large your network is, Solarwinds offers different pricing (Source: http://www.solarwinds.com/onlinequotes). Weighing these pros and cons is a crucial step before installing these products in a production environment.
5. Performance
This section ties directly in with the monitoring solution I have in place. Solarwinds will detect whether or not there’s any issues hardware or network related and bring those to my attention.
For example, say the network is at 90% and it’s running really slowly. I can set a threshold in Solarwinds which notifies me and I’m able to take action. The same thing goes for a slow system. If the Wiki box only has 200mb of free memory, I can quickly add more memory without there being too much downtime.
Performance in an enterprise network can be a different story, specifically with the router situation. One of the biggest issues would be making sure there isn’t too much bandwidth on a given router. If we had multiple applications that required a lot of bandwidth, expanding to multiple routers and pouring traffic through those different routers would be