Reference no: EM133347690

Scenario:

In this assignment, you will be playing the part of a computer hardware and networking consultant for a firm known as "Made to Measure Computers" - MTMC.

"Nuts & Bolts Imaging" is a new customer for your firm which specializes in producing sophisticated designs of parts for the automotive industry. They have been very successful so far and they now wish to expand their Computer Aided Design operation so they can adequately service more of their customers and in different design areas.

They will need to have new desktop PCs designed, and some servers and their network needs to be configured to link all their systems together.

For the new PCs, they need 30 units which need to be capable of running Autodesk's famous AutoCAD in its latest version.

Each PC will need at least 2 display screens with an option for adding a third - any graphics card choices must allow provision for this. Also, provisions should be made to ensure that the designers using these systems are able to use these systems comfortably and in line with health and safety requirements for the usage of such equipment.

They also need to have 2 file server units which will act as a central design storage facility and its "mirror" backup. Only rudimentary display hardware is needed for these, as they will, for the most part, be accessed remotely rather than directly in day-to-day operations. They are not expected to handle database queries.

These systems (design PCs and servers) need to be added to their existing lineup of PCs on their company network.

Tasks:
In a report of no more than 2500 words, and a single-page brochure/quotation document for your customer (so be concise) :

For the report:
Specify and design a suitable PC model for the design section of the company (30 machines). Ensure that:

• The design conforms to all the requirements for running the most up-to-date version of Autodesk AutoCAD (the price of which should not be included in the system cost).
• A suitable operating system license is selected and included for each machine.
• You supply a full and detailed justification as to why each component has been selected - backed up by suitable evidence.
• Suitable security features are included for the safeguarding of data on these systems.

• You provide full costing for these machines without exceeding a budget of £2500 sterling per machine.
o This should include your company profit margin at 10%.

Specify and design the 2 file servers suitable for use as the master and mirror servers for design storage. Ensure that:

• They have a suitable and economical network operating system installed with any appropriate licensing sorted out for the number of clients accessing them (i.e. the 30 users of the PCs you are designing).
• Supply full justification again about your component choices - as per the PC units.
• You investigate and recommend what can be done to implement
the mirroring of the two servers. Either to act as a continuous back up from the master to the mirror or a load-balancing approach where both servers are sharing the workload - and hold identical copies of files - i.e. a file written to one, will automatically be written to the other one too.
• Suitable security features are considered.
• You provide full costing for these two servers without exceeding a budget of £3000 sterling per machine.
o This should also include your company profit margin at 10%.

For the Brochure/Quotation:

• Produce a single-page brochure that is suitable to give to the enquiring client company showing what their systems would be made up of - in proper layman's terms and your final offer price.
• This need not be heavy on words at all, but attractive enough and informative enough for a client to make a decision to buy.