IT645 CTU Virtual Technologies for Data Center Virtualization Discussion This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substant

IT645 CTU Virtual Technologies for Data Center Virtualization Discussion This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas. Please see attached for assignment details for units 1-5 di Unit 1 Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 600–800 words that respond to the
following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by
your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
Investigate the library and Internet for information about virtual technologies and how these technologies can help
organizations achieve their business goals. Complete the following:
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From your research, select and describe at least 3 virtual technologies.
For each selected technology, describe at least 3 benefits that the technology would provide to an
organization.
Discuss how the technologies can be combined to provide further benefits to an organization.
Unit 2 Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 600–800 words that respond to the
following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by
your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
This Discussion Board assignment will have 3 parts that are all related to justifying virtualization to your
management. They are as follows:
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2.
3.
Download a virtual workstation. Showing management an actual demonstration is helpful in making a case
for virtualization.
Read a story from an expert who has experience with virtualization.
Research and provide a written recommendation for virtualization. This will be shared with your classmates
in a discussion.
Download a Virtual Workstation
To convince management that virtualization provides efficiencies for the corporation, you need to demonstrate what
virtualization is. A very effective manner is to demonstrate how virtualization works, such as showing a host
machine with a virtual machine using a different operating system.
For the first part of the Discussion Board assignment, you are to download the virtual workstation from this Web
site.
The site may require you to sign in. The download is an evaluation copy. Provide a screen capture of the virtual
workstation after installation
Story
A few years ago, I worked as a configuration manager for a geographic information systems (GIS) company that had
offices in Denver, Calgary, Ottawa, Munich, Prague, and Jakarta. The company had five aircraft that were equipped
with systems developed internally, including radar and acquisition software. The radar system was developed in
Munich, software development was done in Calgary and Denver, and editing was done in Ottawa and Jakarta. We
did not have a disaster recovery plan in place, and the development team stored their source code in a server in
Calgary. As a configuration manager, I expressed concern that we did not have a way to recover from disaster, but
there was never money to implement a proper disaster recovery plan.
A few months went by, and one day, we got a frantic call from the lead developer in Calgary. Their source control
server crashed, and they needed a replacement quickly. We did not have a replacement server, so we had to order it
from our preferred vendor. When the server came to the Denver office, it was configured with the proper patches for
the operating system, and the server was shipped to Calgary. The Calgary office installed the source control
application and restored the last known database image. By the time the server was ready for production, three
weeks had passed. Meanwhile, the developers were making changes to code without saving it first. The merging of
code took another week.
As it typically happens in industry, after a disaster, upper management finds funds to fix the issue. I got a modest
$1,500 budget to do whatever I could to implement a disaster recovery plan for source code. I proposed to migrate
the source code repository to Denver. I then purchased an old Xenon server for $1,000 and was able to obtain 64
gigabytes (GB) of random access memory (RAM) from our information technology (IT) team. They had a few
memory chips laying around, unused. I purchased four 1 terabyte (TB) external drives for the machine and installed
VMWare (we had a license that was no longer used). I created four virtual machines in that server, allocating 8 GB
of RAM to each virtual machine, and 300GB of external space for each. One of the virtual machines was configured
just like the Calgary server, using a Linux operating system. We changed the process so that the developers checked
in their code in the virtual machine in Denver. Every night, the virtual machine environment was copied to Calgary
and Ottawa. A host machine was created in servers in Calgary and Ottawa to serve as secondary servers in case the
main server crashed. The disaster recovery plan was designed to be able to boot up a virtual machine in any of the
three locations (Denver, Calgary, or Ottawa) in case of a problem affecting the server in these offices. We ran a test
and were able to restore functionality after 20 minutes of losing a server in an office. The other virtual machines in
Denver were used to create the application build, to test the installation, and to create automation test scripts. The
project was a success, and we were able to demonstrate how we could improve our process with limited funds.
Moral
Demonstrating how virtual machines can provide flexibility and disaster recovery capabilities will change the
executive team’s initial resistance to migrate to a virtual environment.
Discussion
Investigate the library and Internet for information about virtual technologies for data center virtualization, data
management, and virtual storage.
Complete the following for this assignment:
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Based on your research, provide a recommendation for a proposed target platform for a typical host
machine, including the number of central processing units (CPUs), the amount of memory, the number of
network interface cards, and the amount of local storage required.
Based on your research of reported virtualization metrics, provide a rough estimate of the number of
physical machines that can be virtualized in a host machine for a typical data center environment
Justify your selection by identifying the problems that these methods will solve and the benefits that will be
achieved by using these methods.
Prepare a Word document that includes screenshots of your virtual machine running under the host environment,
and attach them to your Discussion Board post.
Unit 3 Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 600–800 words that respond to the
following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by
your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
For this discussion, you will complete the following:
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Read the following story from an information technology (IT) professional describing his experience with
moving a function to the cloud.
Proceed to research common problems with cloud implementation.
Discuss the story and your research with your classmates.
Story
As virtualization is implemented in a data center environment, the potential for utilization of cloud computing
becomes more feasible and easier to justify. However, cloud computing creates major concerns for an organization,
and these concerns must be properly addressed. Understanding the concerns can help people find mitigation
strategies to help management decide on the correct course of action.
In a company I used to work for, we decided to move our help desk to the cloud, using Software as a Service (SaaS).
The decision was made based on cost avoidance because we did not have to host the servers and software in-house,
and the estimated savings were significant. We migrated to the cloud, and everything went very smooth at first.
However, as the number of users increased and the demands placed on the system also increased, we started to
experience long delays in response. After we requested more central processing units (CPU) and storage in the
cloud, the performance got better for a time, but performance decreased again as we ported the application to more
countries. Eventually, we decided to move the application in-house. The migration back from the cloud was
expensive and took some time, but we found out that we had more control over the application because in the cloud,
we did not know how many other clients were being served with the same application. Our service level agreement
with the vendor did not account for the future load on the system. In retrospect, we failed to accurately estimate the
load increase on the system as we incorporated more customers in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and
Asia.
Moral
The benefits of cloud computing outweigh the drawbacks, but only if they are properly addressed.
Discussion
Use the library and Internet to research and analyze the most common problems encountered by organizations when
implementing cloud computing and how they are mitigated. Complete the following:
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Based on your research, identify at least 1 problem encountered by organizations when implementing cloud
computing.
Describe the problem and the potential impact it might have on the organization.
Discuss steps that can be taken to mitigate the problem.
Include an analysis of the cost of your approach to mitigation.
Unit 5 Primary Discussion Response:
In this course, you were introduced to problem-based learning (PBL). Engage in discussion by providing feedback
on your experience with PBL, as follows:
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How easy was it to understand each of the problems that were presented?
Did the TSG case study help you understand the issues faced by an organization?
Were you able to find the relevant information that you needed to fully understand the problem?
How did you obtain the knowledge that is necessary to propose a solution for the problems presented?
Did you experience any learning issues?
Assess and reflect on your learning process. What changes or suggestions would you make?
Review and reflect on the knowledge you have gained from this course. Based on your review and reflection, write
at least 3 paragraphs on the following:
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What were the most compelling topics learned in this course?
How did participating in discussions help your understanding of the subject matter? Is anything still unclear
that could be clarified?
What approaches could have yielded additional valuable information?

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