Slide 6
Slide 6
Architecture
Infrastructure Building Blocks
and Concepts
Infrastructure Lifecycle
Agenda
● Introduction
● Purchasing infrastructure and services
● Deploying the infrastructure
● Testing the Infrastructure
● Maintaining the infrastructure
● Monitoring
● Logging
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Introduction
● The infrastructure lifecycle
encompasses the following
steps:
Purchasing infrastructure and
services
Build-up, testing and go-live
Maintaining the infrastructure
Deploying applications
Decommissioning the
infrastructure
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Purchasing Infrastructure and Services
● Most large-scale IT projects require procurement of
hardware, software, or services
● The purchase process entails:
Determining what is needed – BoM (Bill of Material) , SoW (
Statement of Work)
Getting an offer – Suppliers choice, Bidding and Tendering
Ordering – Purchasing Department
Delivery – Checking at delivery time
Warranty – Period of warranty claims
Renewal – Goods need renewal after certain time
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Deploying the Infrastructure
● Assembling the Infrastructure: Infrastructure can be assembled using the following checklist:
Build up the physical datacenter room
Install redundant power cabling
Install racks
Test the facilities
Install the server, networking, and storage hardware
Allow for a burn-in period to ensure the equipment is not “dead on arrival” (DOA) or fails
within the first day
Check the power and cooling usage of the equipment
Configure the infrastructure components
Install systems management tools
Test systems management processes.
Provide as-built documentation to the systems managers.
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Testing the Infrastructure
● After assembling the infrastructure, it should be tested
● Each test type has a predefined scope:
Functional tests
Performance tests
Security tests
● Test Stages
Unit
System integration test
Fallback test
Migration test
Acceptance test
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Go Live Scenarios
● Big Bang
● Parallel Change Over
● Phased Changeover
● At the go-live date, high alert is needed from:
The project team
Systems managers
Service desk
Senior management
● After the new system is live, on-site support should be available for some
predefined time
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Maintaining the Infrastructure
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Logging
● Logging can generate large amounts of data every day
● Logging detail is usually configurable
● Timestamps of log entries must match exactly to be able to correlate logs from various
sources
● Big data reporting tools can be used to create overviews and to find anomalies
● Analyzing log files is something fundamentally different than monitoring
Monitoring systems are real-time systems
Log files are meant for analyzing situations afterwards
● Log files must be properly secured
Confidentiality: They contain much sensitive data
Integrity: Using them as evidence
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Capacity Management
● Capacity Management ensures the timely availability of sufficient
infrastructural capacity to process, transport, and store data now
and in the future
● The following input is needed:
Monitoring of resources to detect trends
Reduced free disk capacity provides insight in when to purchase or free-up disk capacity
Business plans to anticipate on business changes that might have impact on
the infrastructure
A marketing campaign during the summer time could justify temporary adding server capacity
Developments in technology
Upgrading servers when a higher capacity server blade becomes available
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Deploying Applications
● DTAP:
Development
New software is developed or existing software is modified
Test
Software is tested by independent testers
Acceptance
Software is accepted by a delegation of the user population
Production
When all tests are successful, the software is deployed in the production environment
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Deploying Applications
● A real-world DTAP environment could contain a:
Sandbox environment – Pre-development environment, where preliminary tests can be performed on
new technology or solutions
Development environment – To develop new software and configurations
Test environment – Functionally test new software releases
User Acceptance test environment – Allow end users to functionally test new releases
Non-Functional acceptance environment – Setup to be identical to the production environment to
enable reliable performance, availability, and security testing
Hot Fix environment – Find fixes for production problems, Test fixes before they are deployed to
production
Production environment – Runs the actual software for end users
A Systems Management environment is often used to manage the other
environments
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Decommissioning