My (target) IT infrastructure
My infrastructure must fulfil the following purposes
Media Centre functionality in a number of rooms, some with screens, others with audio only Centralised storage for DVDs and CDs Ability to record programmes from real-time media via aerial and internet TV Management and support for XP and Vista machines on the network XP and Vista ‘servers’ for thin clients and sandbox via RDP Various Linux servers Central storage on at least two local units with RAID Local and off-site backups NAT and firewall with the option of access via VPN High levels of virtualisation, security and flexibilityThe infrastructure consists of the following components
WAN router: Provider-supplied router acting as the gateway for a /29 network Connected to a switch on the WLAN VLANSwitch:
Managed gigabit switch with 24 ports
VLANs for WAN, LAN, Guest LAN and miscellaneous
LAN router:
Standalone, 1U Linux machine with HDD and gigabit network card in trunk mode
Connected to the switch on all VLANs
Handles firewall, NAT and routing between VLANs
Handles access between the LAN and Guest LAN
Handles VPN access to the LAN
Multiple public IP addresses on the external side
Services are mapped to the LAN via 1-to-1 and 1-to-many NAT/PAT
Assigns private IP addresses via DHCP on the LAN side
Various proxies
Connection to secondary network connection (WiMAX)
Servers (referred to as ‘hardware’):
2 Xen servers with 8-port SATA RAID5 and gigabit network cards in trunk mode
Connected to a switch on the WLAN-VLAN and LAN-VLAN
Each server runs at least one file server with support for NFS and SMB
Virtual servers and workstations are assigned either private or public IP addresses
Virtual servers and workstations are allocated storage on the hardware for system and data, as well as storage on the other piece of hardware’s file server for transaction logs, etc.
One server is used primarily for servers and the other primarily for workstations
No application-specific hardware
No physical KVM for virtual machines
Hardware interface server:
Linux server with VMware Server
Connected to a switch on the LAN-VLAN
Connects application-specific hardware to the internal LAN when the hardware cannot be connected directly to the internal LAN
Linux-compatible hardware runs directly on the host
Windows hardware runs on virtual XP with Apache
Windows and Linux each have their own private IP address
Applications on virtual servers connect to hardware via a generic, proprietary or custom protocol
Access Points:
Access points with VLAN functionality are set up so that users can access both the LAN VLAN and the Guest VLAN via WLAN