NET701

The NET701 Class Blog

February 2021

This is the NET701 Class Blog space. Learning resources will all be posted here instead of Moodle. MS Teams will be used for daily communication and quick sharing of ideas and instructions. Moodle will only act as the static course place holder for assignments, drop-boxes, etc.

Work, week 45

November 3 2020

The sessions this week will be for Assessemnt 2 Q & A. There is no compulsory attendance, as described in my postings in our NET701 MS Team.

The last blog posting suggestion: Your IT Service management framework of choice – why?

List of blog posting suggestions:

Give a brief overview of what ITIL and Cobit 5 are, and what they can be used for?
In an example of project/change managemen, What would your initial approach be to get an overview of the scenario?
Describe your choice of technology and deployment environment for Assignment 2. Remember to give reasons for your choice
Your IT Service management framework of choice – why?

Work, week 44

October 28 2020

The session on Thursday will be for Assessemnt 2 Q & A. There is no compulsory attendance.

Blog posting suggestion for this week: Describe your choice of technology and deployment environment (practical scenario)

IT Service Management Frameworks - Excercise

October 21 2020

Example of project/change management

You have had a permanent position at the ITS department at NMIT for around a year, within firewall configuration and maintenance. You are therefore already familiar with the procedures and the structure of the department. You are now approached by your team leader because the ITS department is planning to implement a new firewall product, and he knows that you know something about governance and management frameworks. Therefore, you would be a potential manager candidate for the project. As you already know your team leader, and he knows that you master the tasks you are doing presently, the interview is not a job interview, and you don’t have to worry about losing your present position. But you would obviously like to advance your career and convince him about your capabilities.

Initiating the project
- What would your initial approach be to get an overview of the scenario?
Methodology level
- Please line up and explain the overall planning framework you would use. You can choose several approaches or create your own hybrid approach. As long as you are able to argue for your choice.(question below)
- Justify your choice of overall project management framework(s)
Method Level
- Please create a list of overall steps you would divide the project into:
- Justify your choice of these steps.
- Explain roughly what you and your team would do in these steps.
Tools level
- On a practical level; how would you and your team execute the project work?
- Some examples could be:
  - Which software tools would you use?
  - How would you organise and share documentation?
  - How would you organise communication in the team?
  - How would you organise time management and allocation?
  - Etc.
  - ..

Bloging task for this week

October 21 2020

Answer the first question in the exercise above

Assessment 2 - Blogs

October 15 2020

I would expect at least 4 blog postings from you to cover this part of the assesssment. The blog postings will be your refelctions on your work with ITIL and Cobit 5. You can choose to either refelct on projects that you have been working with in the past, reflections on your contributions to the Assessemnt 2 group work and/or reflect on the work in the classroom. If you choose to reflect on the work in the classroom this week, the blogging theme would be:

Give a brief overview of what ITIL and Cobit 5 are, and what they can be used for.

A new theme for the following week will be published here next Thursday.

Assessment 2 - Groups

October 15 2020

Anushka
Mahir, Luke & Jayden
Aileen & Chamara
Asha, Vishnupriya, Nikhil & Akhil
David, Vishnu, Suhaib & Mariya
Blake & Regan

NB: Please let me know if I got it wrong.

Assignment 1, Part 1 - Deadline Extension

September 23 2020

Submission Deadline for Assignment 1, Part 1 (lab blogs) has been extended until Sunday 4th of October

I have been asked to give you a bit more time. Given the delays that we have experienced and the fact that you are all involved in solving the probelms, it is not a problem. Please note that part 3 of Assessment 1 - the screencast - is still due the 27th of September.

Ways to work the next week

September 3 2020

We will try to team up in pairs and shut down as many of our machines as possible. To ensure that all work you are doing is communicated, you can for example use MS Teams. Please ask my if you would like me to create your own seperate group.

Amnesty - Assessment 1.3 (screencast)

September 2 2020

You can get amnesty from this assessment, if you have acted as a presenter of progress of the ICM labs and acted as an instructor in the classroom. I have put this in place to ensure there is a reward for the students who generously have donated their time and efforts.

Assessment 1.2 - Presentations on Thursday, the 10th of September

September 2 2020

Groups

Akhil, Vishnupriya & Nikhil
David & Vishnu
Suhaib, Asha & Mariya
Blake, Jayden, Luke & Regan
Mahir, Chamara, Anushka & Aileen

This part of the assignment centres on the knowledge gained from the VMware class materials and lab work that has been completed as part of this course. You will work in a group of at least two people (preferably 3 individuals) to present information..

This is a group activity (2 or 3 people). Using the knowledge that you have gained from completing the labs, create a class presentation (10 minutes) focussed on the how VMware can be implemented as part of a hybrid infrastructure solution, with focus on three objectives:

Security network from internal and/or external perspective
Economic factors to consider when you are running a hybrid infrastructure solution in an enterprise (on-premise hypervisor/cloud based hosting and services)
Staffing/qualification constraints to consider in an institution with a hybrid infrastructure setup

Please note that the enterprise network is theoretical and not based on a particular case study.

Instructional video on WMWare 6.5 ICM

September 2 2020

Message from Grant (our curriculum manager) about TALOS VTE lack of backup

August 21 2020

I need to ask you to make sure you talk to your students and ensure they are backing up ALL of their work remotely themselves. We are not in a position to rely on IT to be able to restore any of their work in event of loss or failure.

I am sending an email to Directorate to raise my concerns about this but wanted to make sure you were all aware of this and that we are making sure our students understand the importance of them making their own backups of their work.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please let me know.

Thanks Grant

Alex from CCL and Dan from NMIT ITS

August 17 2020

We are in the fortunate position of having Alex from CCL coming in on Thursday to speak about the NMIT infrastructure architecture as an example of an enterprise solution where WMware is implemented. He will explain the justification of the current solution and it’s advantages/disadvantages. Connected to this will also discuss the hybrid balance in the solution. Lastly we possibly have time to explore how documentation from Vmware can bridge into the management/governance frameworks (ITIL and COBIT).

Dan from NMIT ITS will join him, and talk about NMIT’s infrastructure relevant from a Vmware administration and maintenance perspective. Also, it will be interesting experience a valuation of the current solution from his perspective.

Advice - initial setup

August 12 2020

A few pieces of advice to set up you Vmware workshop environment.

Work structured with you allocation of switches and IP addresses. Write it down and have a naming convention for you network components
Always install Vmware tools on your you machines whenever you can
Test connections before you progress
Work out you own personal diagram of your environment – so you have the best possible overview

Forget the Windows10 client that you where asked to set up last time for a bit – we might need it later. But set it up in your network with it’s own IP an Internet access

Install the following machines:

ESXi01 6 vCPU 12GB RAM 200GB Hard Disk

ESXi01 6 vCPU 12GB RAM 100GB Hard Disk

Windows2016 Server 4 vCPU 6GB RAM Two 100GB Hard Disk

More resources

August 11 2020

Diagram from Sinhara

Examples of Student Blogs from last year

August 10 2020

Plan for the coming week

August 10 2020

We will get the environment installed with the help from Sinhara. He will also bring a diagram on Wednesday that you can follow.

To support you, I have created links in this blog to a couple of the student blogs from last year. I have also created a collection of presentations and other resources in the ‘files’ section of our NET701 MS Teams space. You can have a look in there, but I will probably also discuss some of them in the classroom.

See you on Wednesday.

First blog posting

August 3 2020

The first blog psting is your personal recount of the presntation on Wednesday the 5th of August

Current Trends for Interprise Infrastructure - Presentations

July 30 2020

This will be the student presentations, Wednesday the 5th of August:

Open Stack by Blake, Jayden and Regan
Intrinsic Security by Aileen, Nikhil, Anushka & Lanka
Container Technology/Docker by Mahir & Luke
IoT – Business Applications Ready for Adaption by David, Mariya and Suhaib
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning by Akhil, Vishnu, Vishnupriya & Asha

No ICM resources - create presentations instead

July 30 2020

Unfortunately, there is a lot of problems getting access to the the VMware Install, Configure & Manage (ICM) lab resources. I had an email today that it was solved – only to find out that it did not work.

So I have to resolve to a backup plan: You will do research today in groups about current Enterprise Infrastructure, trends, solutions and approaches. You will present it next week, hopefully we have the solved the problems by then. Or I will have found an alternative approach.

I have found a few resources, listed here below:

The idea is that you pick one of the trends in the articles and present it. But we will have to communicate your choice beforehand so there are no overlaps and irrelevant topics.

Student blogs from last year

Semester 2 2020