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network services portfolio
Click Challenge for Solution.
Hosting Company
Challenge: A start-up company needed help designing a highly redundant network for their client’s Internet based application. The client was serving the application to various customers from 4 servers, each with the web program and SQL server and different customers. If any one of the servers went down, all the customers on that server were down and there was no plan to recover. ISS was asked to design a more robust server configuration.
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Solution:
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ISS designed and implemented a clustered and load-balanced solution. Two web servers that are identical were setup to load-balance incoming traffic. Two database servers that shared a drive array were setup as a SQL cluster with automatic failover. If a single server failed, the other servers would continue to carry the load without affecting production. Although it was the same number of servers as in the original design, the design increased capacity from 16 customers to 75 customers.
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High-Tech Office Center
Challenge: An office complex wanted to provide shared Internet service to the companies leasing in the building. This service needed to be available 24x7x365 and be broad enough to support 10 high usage companies. The building was located on the fiber loop running through Battle Creek.
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Solution:
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ISS working with CTS installed and configured a router that would provide OC-3 level bursting and T-3 sustainable Internet bandwidth. The router was configured to automatically fail-over to a copper route in the case that the fiber route went down. ISS installed Cisco switching and firewalls for each company so they could take advantage of the bandwidth for a fraction of the cost.
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Financial Advisor
Challenge: A Financial Services company decided to become an independent agent. This meant that they were required to meet the Securities and Exchange Commission’s stringent rules. Their e-mail needed to be archived permanently and have auditing capabilities. They needed an emergency recovery plan that included resuming work at an alternative site with no loss of function or data.
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Solution:
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ISS recommended and implemented a new server with Small Business Server 2003 as the e-mail server and SQL warehouse. A second server was installed as the e-mail auditing server and it was set to archive email to the SQL on the SBS 2003 server. A new Oracle server was installed to function as their data warehouse and customer gateway. A network scanning program was implemented to scan all paper documents to an electronic database. Finally, an off-site server was setup for data replication through a VPN and an Emergency Recover Plan was developed addressing the case of a building failure.
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Auto Parts Manufacturer
Challenge: An auto parts manufacturer was required to provide information from the plant floor to meet customer’s vendor specifications. A link between the 2 networks left the plant floor in a vulnerable position. This plant needed to protect their process network from external influence. They could not afford a major downtime event and still maintain credibility with their customer.
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Solution:
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ISS specified and installed a firewall between the networks and blocked unwanted traffic from the office network from entering the plant floor network. In the 3 years since that installation, the office network has been overrun with 3 separate viruses. Without the firewall in place, the process network would have been infected and production would have stopped for several days.
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Non-Profit Organization
Challenge: ISS was contracted by a nonprofit to be their provider of technical support. Because of years of neglect, we immediately began to see problems that needed be addressed. Items that needed to be addressed included: software licensing, varying Operating Systems on each workstation, lack of virus protection, and their mail system hosted externally having a slow and unreliable connection. Because of limited funds, ISS needed to implement a solution that was cost effective.
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Solution:
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ISS’s solution was a multiple phase solution that began with getting the software that they needed to make them compliant. ISS began by introducing their nonprofit client to a website that provides certain software at a greatly reduced rate to nonprofits. With the reduction in pricing they were able to purchase all the software that they needed to become compliant. The next step was to upgrade all computers that qualified to Windows XP Pro and tighten security on both the workstations and the servers. Their e-mail was migrated to an internal Exchange server and the virus protection migrated to a centrally managed solution. After spending years struggling with the email system, moving it in house served to be the absolute right decision. After standardizing the software, there are less problems reported and less costs associated with support. Instead of reacting to problems as they occur, the organization is able to budget and execute their IT upgrades.
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Realtor
Challenge: Their business is dependant on information gathered and dispersed through the Internet. Their network was nearly nonfunctional and the last two System Integrators had failed to solve the problems. The employees were becoming increasingly frustrated.
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Solution:
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Innovative Software found a myriad of causes for the difficulties the company was experiencing. The networking a security problems were corrected and Innovative Software led a coordinated effort between the existing service providers to optimize their Internet access and their website. Frustration and complaints about the network are now nonexistent.
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Fortune 100 Food Manufacturer
Challenge: Their network was consolidating and they needed a resource to convert a critical Novell server over to a Microsoft Windows server. They could not afford any downtime except for a schedule 2-day weekend and the same hardware needed to be used. The server would become a member server of a parent domain and the Group Membership privileges and NTFS permissions needed to be designed from scratch. The main program running on the server was a document management system that also performed sophisticated print spooling to various printers and plotters.
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Solution:
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Innovative Software managed the entire project and presented them with a complete solution. The transition went so smoothly that there was not one problem call. All devices and programs were installed and configured correctly. All users had the appropriate permissions and resources.
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