Business Challenges
This customer’s infrastructure and technologies was predominantly based around Microsoft technologies.
In addition the organisation was operating a legacy Novell NetWare environment for their office staff, and a Microsoft Windows platform to manage other critical areas of the business. Management of the Novell NetWare environment was becoming increasingly difficult along with issues around reliability. As a consequence of this, the IT infrastructure was reviewed, and was deemed to be lacking in several key areas.
Our consultants were approached to review and design a completely new IT infrastructure for the customer’s office systems which would increase both the service availability and user productivity, whilst decreasing the administrative burden and support calls received by the helpdesk.
The customer required our consultants to perform a migration of user accounts, computer resources, data and E-Mail with very little visible impact to the user community, and perform this on a rolling basis, department by department, until all the legacy systems had been decommissioned.
As always, timeframes were tight as future projects relied heavily on the delivery of the key service requirements.
The Solution
Key members of our consultancy team were assigned to the project and were involved with the customer from the start of the project to maintain consistency and ensure a full working knowledge of other related projects.
Our consultants produced a detailed directory service and messaging design based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Cluster services. The design catered for all of the requirements requested by the customer.
The Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange 2003 messaging platform and clustered file and print servers were configured offsite in a Proof of Concept lab due to restricted space being available in the customer’s data-centre. The customer was able to work with us during the configuration of the systems and services in order to grasp the concepts involved in the new technologies.
Our consultants worked with the customer and the Project Manager to coordinate the delivery of a fully working solution to the client's premises, which sat alongside the legacy systems during the period of the migration.
Over the next weeks, network services (DHCP and DNS), data and mailboxes were migrated from the NetWare and GroupWise servers onto the Microsoft Windows servers on a departmental basis using Quest Migrator for Groupwise. The departmental PC's were all re-installed with Windows XP Professional and an application bundle automatically deployed using MS Remote Installation Services (RIS).
Task Phases:
Project Initiation - preliminary meetings took place with
the customer to discuss the specific requirement of the project and to
gain an understanding of key goals and drivers in relation to the
delivery.
Technical Workshops - Technical workshops were used to
examine the overall requirement in great detail and to formulate an
agreed prospective technical design.
Discovery & Audit - On site discovery and auditing was
carried out to ensure that our consultants had a full understanding of
the existing environment and to ascertain the risks involved.
Detailed Design - detailed design document was produced by
our consultants and was reviewed by all parties involved prior to
submission for approval.
Planning & POC - This phase defined the project plan in
preparation for the implementation. Full testing of the proposed
procedures was carried out during the Proof of Concept, and the results
of which were documented in full for the customer.
Implementation - pre-defined staged implementation, starting
with the initial offsite build of the server infrastructure, through to
the implementation onsite.
