SCENARIO

CustomCraft Furnishings is a medium-size family-owned company that manufactures to order, repairs, and refurbishes premium, high-end, home and office furniture, and sells its goods and services to individual and corporate customers in Virginia and Maryland. Its business model is based on generating leads over the phone, via retail locations, or through the website, acquiring orders through retail locations, making in-person on-site estimates, creating custom designs, manufacturing furniture in its assembly shops, and delivering and installing on-site.

CustomCraft Furnishings Main Office is located in the Business Park in Richmond, VA. About 13 miles away, in a single lot in the North Richmond Industrial Park in Ashland, VA, CustomCraft Furnishings has two other facilities an assembly shop and a warehouse for materials, components, and finished goods (located across the parking lot from the assembly shop); attached to the warehouse is also a garage that houses a small fleet of trucks and vans for companys cargo transportation needs. Besides the Richmond shop and warehouse facility, another shop and warehouse facility is located in Baltimore, MD. CustomCraft Furnishings has four brick-and-mortar retail stores and showrooms with furniture exhibits and associates who consult customers and acquire orders.

Each of the facilities has its own client-server LAN with at least one physical server, several workstations, and printers. Each retail store has several points of sale (specialized computers) networked with the respective local servers. Each of the assembly shop/warehouse facilities has a common LAN; there are several workstations in each facility for tasks like processing procurement and sales orders, viewing and printing design blueprints, processing pictures and estimates, and other tasks. The LANs of all facilities are connected to the Main Office via the internet. Transactional database updates and documents generated and updated in each facilitys LAN (and stored on the local servers) are synchronized with the Main Offices servers in batch processing every 24 hours (at 8 PM).

The network infrastructure of the Main Office includes:

• An application server for internal business applications, including sales order processing, accounting, human resources and payroll, and design;
• A database server that hosts customers and sales order database, suppliers and procurement order database, materials/components inventory database, HR and payroll database, etc;
• A file server for design artwork, blueprints, images, invoices, paystubs, spreadsheets, and other various files;
• A web server that hosts the website with general information about the company, products, photo gallery, store locations/hours, etc;
• Amazons AWS virtual/cloud server that hosts the web-store/e-commerce application for collecting online customer orders; this is a recent experimental addition by the CIO in order to expand the companys e-commerce capabilities and to explore the possibility of transitioning from physical servers to the cloud infrastructure;
• 5 Windows desktops for the executive group (CEO, COO, CIO, Administrative assistant, IT assistant);
• 6 Windows desktops for the marketing, sales, CRM, and fulfillment group (CPO, and 5 sales account managers);
• 2 Windows desktops for the procurement group (2 procurement managers reporting to the COO);
• 3 Windows desktops for the accounting and finance group (CFO and 2 accounting and finance specialists);
• 6 Mac desktop computers for the design group (the lead designer, 3 designers, and 2 trainees);
• 6 printers shared across all groups (each group has 1 printer in its office; the design group has 2 printers);
• All necessary networking devices (router, switches, cables, WAPs).

The Main Office is located in an office building; each group/department has its own office space section, with several workplaces. All servers, the router, and the main switch are located in a secure utility room. All workstations are connected to the physical servers via Ethernet cables connected to a switch, which is then wired to the main switch. CustomCraft Furnishings supports the BYOD policy: users (employees and customers) can connect their own laptops, smartphones, and tablets to the office network wirelessly (employees use secure, corporate WiFi, and customers and guests may use open, guest WiFi).

CustomCraft Furnishings' current computer network infrastructure was built in the mid-1990s, with a few later upgrades over the years and a recent experimentation with one cloud server. The CIO realizes that its current architecture is outdated and needs to be upgraded. You and the CIO are working out a plan to shift to the cloud with the aims of (a) reducing the cost of maintaining the infrastructure and (b) enabling more dynamic e-commerce-oriented business processes.

Practically all physical servers and most desktops currently used are at the end of their lifecycle and are expected to be decommissioned and replaced over the next several years. The management is considering migrating all applications and data from all physical LAN servers to the cloud server and moving away from batch transaction processing to real-time processing (at which point all physical servers could be decommissioned). Data from CustomCraft Furnishings various databases will be consolidated into a single relational transactional database that will be used by various functional area applications. By launching an updated e-commerce application on the cloud server, CustomCraft Furnishings will be able to reduce the average order processing time. All outdated desktop workstations will be gradually replaced with laptops for top management and sales account managers and up-to-date desktops for the rest of the employees; all retail stores point-of-sale computers will be replaced with newer, slicker point-of-sale devices. The CIO wants to keep the BYOD policy in place.

CustomCraft Furnishings is hiring you to assist the CIO with redesigning their data communications network infrastructure. You begin this project by auditing and documenting the as-is network. You have to analyze how data communications among the companys facilities are routed and what network connections are in place for data communications between these facilities.

TASKS

Task 1

Draw a high-level, network-layer network diagram for the companys entire existing corporate physical IT infrastructure. Show all appropriate LANs (represented by their respective servers) and their connections (network-layer equipment); appropriately label geographic locations, facilities, and infrastructure components; give the diagram an appropriate title; clearly state any additional assumptions you need to make. Use appropriate shapes for all diagram elements; make your design as elegant (complete, simple, and neat) as possible.

Task 2

After completing the high-level model, you would now document details about LANs in each individual location. Lets begin with the Main Office LAN. Draw a low-level, data-link-layer network diagram for the existing LAN of the Main Office. Show all appropriate server, client, and networking devices, and make sure their connections are as described in the scenario; otherwise, clearly state your assumptions for any missing information; appropriately label geographic locations, facilities, groups/departments, and infrastructure components; make sure your low-level diagram is consistent with the high-level diagram; give the diagram an appropriate title. Use appropriate shapes and labels for all diagram elements; make your model as elegant (complete, simple, and neat) as possible.

Task 3

Draw a high-level, network-layer network diagram for the companys proposed corporate IT infrastructure. The requirements of task 1 apply here.

Task 4

Draw a low-level, data-link-layer network diagram for the proposed IT infrastructure of the Main Office. The requirements of task 2 apply here.

Task 5

Write a 1-page cover memo explaining your work. Clearly and concisely state the purpose, problem, your solution (analysis and models), any additional assumptions you need to make, conclusion, and recommendations.

Summary of CustomCraft Furnishings' facilities (if you need to determine distances between the stores, use the online maps) \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|} \hline Facility & Location & Functions \\ \hline Main Office and showroom & \begin{tabular}{l} Richmond Business Park in \\ Richmond, VA \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{l} Executive group (general management); \\ Procurement group; \\ Marketing, sales \& fulfillment group (sales account \\ managers); \\ Design group; \\ Accounting \& finance group; \\ IT group \end{tabular} \\ \hline Richmond assembly shop & \begin{tabular}{l} North Richmond Industrial Park in \\ Ashland, VA (13 miles from the \\ Main Office) \end{tabular} & Manufacturing and assembly \\ \hline Richmond warehouse & \begin{tabular}{l} (across the parking lot from the \\ assembly shop) \end{tabular} & Storing materials, components, finished goods \\ \hline Garage & & Logistics operations \\ \hline \begin{tabular}{l} Baltimore assembly shop, \\ warehouse, garage \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{l} Carroll-Camden Industrial Area in \\ southwest Baltimore, MD \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{l} Manufacturing and assembly \\ Storing materials, components, finished goods \\ Logistics operations \end{tabular} \\ \hline Charlottesville retail store & Charlottesville, VA & Showroom and retail operations \\ \hline Springfield retail store & Springfield, VA & Showroom and retail operations \\ \hline Norfolk retail store & Norfolk, VA & Showroom and retail operations \\ \hline Baltimore retail store & Baltimore, MD & Showroom and retail operations \\ \hline \end{tabular}