Network Application Administration the smart way

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Network Application Administration the smart way

• David Richards
• Queensland University of Technology

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Universities are a business?No-one told us

• Our environment is changing we are now expected
  to
• Deliver services, not servers and systems
• Project plan
• Communicate with clients (who?)
• Use new jargon like
• Corporate, enterprise, strategy, vision,
  roadmaps, stakeholders, policy, etc...
• We now have to justify our existence, otherwise
  we can just be outsourced.

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Technology Lifecycle
Norman (1998 The Invisible Computer)
Emerging or Site/Vendor Specific Technology
Mature Technology
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3 Strata of Technology

• Mature (or packaged)
• Anyone can do this in almost any environment
• Well established protocols and standards
• Eg. SMTP / POP / IMAP
• Emerging / Vendor Specifc
• New application, may be useful to organisation
• May be multiple ways of doing the same thing
  usually not interoperable
• Standards/protocols are on the way
• Eg. Diary (Steltor / Oracle, Microsoft, etc)
• Site Specific
• One off application of technology, possibly a
  competitive advantage.
• Eg. QUT Virtual

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Management ApproachMature

• Mature Technology
• Package it
• Deploy it
• Let it look after itself and occasionally
  maintain it
• Use well established standards and protocols
• Possibly just do what everyone else is doing

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Management ApproachSite Specific

• Site Specific Technology
• Plan
• Design
• Implement
• Maintain a large investment
• Long lifetime
• Normally in house legacy systems

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Management ApproachEmerging

• Emerging Technology
• Play with it
• Research
• Consider
• Make recommendation
• Project manage the process
• May have to scrap it if the industry moves
• Typical ROI situation, do we need it? How much?
  What do we get?

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Packaging Mature Technology

• We package and maintain
• Maintaining both the system and data
• Bugs, upgrade paths, operating systems, hardware,
  etc..
• Someone else packages and maintains it
• We just look after the data
• Someone else has to ensure bugs are fixed, the
  upgrade is easy, the operating system and
  hardware work, etc..
• Performance guarantee

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Network Applications, QUT

• Core Network Applications
• Directory Services
• DNS/DHCP
• Address Management
• Anon FTP
• Time
• External Access Services
• Web Proxy
• SOCKS
• Web Servers

• Corporate Communications
• Diary
• Email
• News
• File sharing
• Phone book
• User Provisioning
• Account Mgt.
• Electronic Access
• Physical Access
• Internet Accounting

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Messaging Project

• Aim
• To appoint a business partner to provide
• QUT with a highly reliable, high
• performance messaging system that will
• assist in delivering QUT business
• objectives.

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More Specifically

• Open Internet Standards (RFC)
• Anti-virus / Anti-spam (RBL)
• Minimal Administration / Maintenance
• Easy remote access
• 3 year performance guarantee
• 98 mail delivered in less than 5 minutes
• Integrate in to QUT
• Novell e-Directory, Legato backup, gigabit
  network, SAN storage (not used), other mail
  servers (IMAP / POP)

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Implementation

• Mirapoint
• Founded in 1997 to provide turnkey solutions
  for messaging networks
• Appliance solution all in one
• Proven low TCO

Mirapoint provides a total solution for
educational institutions that combines
enterprise-class functionality of groupware
solutions with the carrier-grade reliability and
scalability found only in Unix-based solutions.
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Performance

• Unbelievable!
• SpecMail (www.spec.org)
• Highest rating at the time by a factor of 5
• Currently highest using HP Storage Works SAN
• Optimised OS not a general purpose OS.
• Controlled environment

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Scalability / Reliability

• Message Directors
• Routers
• Switches (proxy)
• Message Stores
• All have in box redundancy, and full HA
  configurations are available.
• Can be easily scaled horizontally.

QUT have these on same directors
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QUT Now

• 99 email delivered in less than 30 seconds
• 100 up time excluding scheduled downtime for
  upgrades
• Client experience is better than ever we now
  get compliments not criticism
• E-mail just works

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Network Applications Now

• Administration of e-mail system is negligible
• We know our system (tool) is rock solid so can
  focus on solving business problems
• A scalable infrastructure
• Focus now on more enjoyable things, like
  development
• No late nights!

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Questions