Information Systems 3

Suggested solutions to Practice SAC XYZ Engineering

 

1.

 

2. Four workgroups - data in/info out--> who for
There are clearly many possible answers to this
(a) Designers - customer order, customer requirements/product designs —> manufacturing, updated project schedules —> team manager
 (b) Administration - customer details, customer orders, staff work hours/staff payroll reports —> admin manager, customer orders —> design team
( c ) Manufacturing - customer order, design plans/ updated project schedules, job completion reports —> team or project manager
(d) Management - sales for previous month —> sales trends for past 12 months

 

3. Star topology where a number of stars are connected to a backbone switch.
Evidence in scenario is use of switches which from the cases I have across indicate star topology.
Appropriateness of the topology - - manageable, able to segment the network to separate the design team from the other groups, scalable to allow network to be expanded in the event of growth.

 

4. Design team : large files (20-100Mb) place substantially higher demands on communications infrastructure and servers than general admin requirements. The 100Mbps connection throughout the whole network may be a bottleneck for these large files. Should investigate whether increasing the server network connections to 1Gbps and the design team switch-backbone connection to 1Gbps will improve performance. Data server configuration and performance should also be investigated .

 

Manufacturing team : UTP may be unsuitable in factory environment due to interference by electrical equipment. This should be investigated - may need to be replaced with STP. Alternatively, the manufacturing team
switch may have an intermittent fault causing problems with reliability.

 

5. All the ‘usuals’ - Connect servers & switches to UPS , reputable equipment brands, preventive maintenance, reduduancy in the server hardware eg. RAID I (mirroring), RAIDV, antivirus software

Note :  backups are not acceptable answer here as they don't help reliability

 

6. Firewall on Internet connection, anti virus software on PC's.
Other possiilities (all the usuals’ )—> User logins, password protection, enforced password changes etc

 

7. (Note : backups not really emphaized in this AOS but I included it anyway. Qusetions that may be asked include:

- what do you backup
- when are backups done
- how long do they take
- what backup hardware & software is ued
- where is the media held - offsite/onsite
- how long are backups retained for etc.etc