Accent Consulting Services, LLC

Case Study

One of Accent’s more recent deployments was for a multiple agency building. There are four servers, over 80 workstations and many network based printers and other devices. The four central servers serve all four agencies, without worry of one agency gaining access to another’s data.

All servers are running Windows Server 2003 Standard.

Server One –Active Directory and Group Policy services. Also, Windows Server Update Services are hosted on server one.
Server Two – Runs Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Server two also has the role of having a hot backup of Active Directory and Group Policy.
Server Three – Roles include File and Print sharing, and backups.
Server Four – Runs Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA).

Server Roles Explained:

The advantage of Active Directory is to provide central authentication and authorization services for Windows based computers. Active Directory also allows administrators to deploy software, and apply critical updates to an entire organization. Active Directory stores information and settings relating to an organization in a central, organized, accessible database. Group Policy provides centralized management and configuration of computers and remote users in an Active Directory environment. Server one also houses Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) which is a centrally managed alternative to computer's Microsoft Update system. By using WSUS, Accent can fully manage the distribution of updates released through Automatic Updates to computers in a corporate network. Server one also is the main server for antivirus software, and also issues DHCP and is in charge of routing inside the network.
Exchange 2007 is the latest iteration in the Exchange Server series. Exchange offers messaging and collaborative platforms to enable organizations to better work with each other using Microsoft Outlook. Major features consist of E-mail, calendaring, contacts and tasks, and support for the mobile and web-based access to information, as well as supporting data storage.
File and Print Sharing allows users to share printers and files between themselves in the form of mapped drives. Mapped drives provide a user with their own user space on the server. Other shared drives where different groups that may have different permissions to each drive, some users may have full access, limited access, or not see the drive at all.
The ISA server is the firewall from the internal network to the internet. It runs special VPN software which allows users to create a private tunnel to the network enabling them to work remotely from home or any other internet enabled location.

The workstations were a mix of brand new machines and old machines being moved into the new building. The old machines had a backup image taken of them, and all machines were formatted and Windows XP Professional installed using Windows Deployments Services (WDS). WDS allows us to boot the machine to the network and the entire Operating System install is taken care of by predetermined settings retrieved from the network.

We were able to setup an assembly-line style operation where new machines are taken care of completely by WDS. Then, old machines are imaged and backed up, install of Windows, and then all machines were deployable. All machines, one in place, were powered on and all connectivity and functionality was checked against a premade checklist for technicians. Network engineers made sure all computers were coming into scope in AD and Group Policy. New user sheets were distributed with workstations so that users upon arriving to their stations were enabled with knowledge needed to work on the network and their new workstations.

Lastly, network devices such as printers were installed, placed in a specific Organizational Unit with AD and made sure the printers were mapping correctly to the correct machines.

Problems we experienced were mainly with there being a multitude of agency specific network based software under one roof. It took some time to decipher each program, how it worked and behaved, and getting it properly deployed on workstations, servers, and the network.