Unit 7 Assignment 1: Designing an Exchange Server

Unit 7 Assignment 1: Designing an Exchange Server (PORTFOLIO)

1. What is the total cost of the server you designed?
a. $1045.00
2. Would you recommend a multiple core processor? If so, why?
a. Yes, I would recommend the Intel Dual-Core Xeon E5205. Don’t ever design your server for the needs you have today, design it for the needs you will have in 5 years.
3. What is the minimum amount of RAM necessary?
a. 16 GBs
4. Would you recommend a RAID setup? If so, what RAID level? If not, what would you suggest for fault tolerance?
a. Yes, a RAID setup is preferable. I prefer RAID 5 configuration because you get:
• Simple and well supported by a wide range of RAID controllers
• Relatively cost effective
• Reasonable level of resilience - you can lose 1 of your disks without losing data
• Good level of space utilization (e.g. you get to leverage more of the space on the disks in the array over that of RAID 1 or RAID 1+0)
• Good overall Performance
Unit 6 Assignment 1: Maintaining Web Services with a Dynamic External IP Address

1. What is Dynamic DNS?
a. Dynamic DNS is defined as a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.
2. Can your Senior Administrator host an Exchange Server without a static IP address?
a. The reason an Exchange server must be assigned a static IP address is that the server’s host name must be associated with the server’s IP address in the Internet’s various DNS servers. Without this mapping, it is impossible for mail to be routed to the domain(s) managed by the mail server. That being said however, it IS possible to configure by using a third party POP3 client. It is much easier to just assign a static IP though.
3. Would a free Dynamic DNS server be sufficient to host the support.contoso##.com domain? Why or why not?
a. Yes, the domain is extremely small and with FreeDNS you can do all of this:
Possible Uses:
• Host your own site on your own connection from home/work/school/etc
• Access your computer with a name (like zeus.afraid.org or yourdomain.com) instead of a numeric IP address
• Run your own http server, ftp server, or anything you want to install on your computer/server
• Fetchable URL to update your IP instantly on our network if you have a dynamic address
• Hosts even work for your LAN. If you have a LAN connected to the internet you can point hosts to private IP addresses (even private IPv6 addresses) and they will work within your network
• Let your friends point theirname.yourdomain.com to their own connection
• Use web forwarding to transparently redirect a hostname to another URL. Let our servers handle the redirection
• afraid.org has been un-interrupted for hundreds of days at a time
• afraid.org is operated from multiple redundant high capacity well connected servers
Feature List:
• Free DNS, Dynamic DNS, Static DNS services
• Free subdomain hosting, free domain hosting, free backup dns, reverse IPv6 DNS hosting (forward/reverse)
• Free URL redirection [web forwarding]
• Paid services available for increased account capacity
• Unlimited number of domains per account (yes really)
• 5 free shared hostnames, use anywhere
• 20 free subdomains per domain, use on your own domains only
• INSTANTLY point yourname.afraid.org or yourname.com to any IP or URL
• Supports every TLD on the Internet
• Currently 98,480 other domains besides afraid.org in our shared domain pool
• Funding is supplied by the members who go premium. Funding goes directly to servers and high bandwidth connections they reside on
• Robust support for CNAME, A, AAAA, MX, NS, TXT, LOC, RP, HINFO, SRV records
• Are you a web developer? You can use nameserver branding to name our nameservers as your own! Let us worry about the maintenance/redundancy
• Round robin DNS supported (Multiple IP addresses for 1 hostname)
• IPv6 forward and reverse (both .int and .arpa) supported
• Dynamic DNS supported, several clients for Win32 and UNIX available
• Forward your hosts to any existing URL on the internet (even to a different port if your ISP blocks 80) with the Web Forward system
• URL cloaking redirection supported, optionally hide real URL of your site in the address bar
• Allows you to change web hosting providers without messy DNS propagation delays
• Simple, fast, flexible and reliable interface, feedback is welcome
• Works with any existing web host you may already be using for both DNS and hosting
• If your web host goes down, visitors will see a "timeout" error instead of a "site does not exist" error, e-mail will also remain queued for 5 days
• If you put a domain in afraid.org, you can edit TTL, Minimum, Allow/Deny AXFR's, and approve/disapprove others from using hosts on your domain. You can also share your domain with the users of afraid.org, or your own web site visitors using our 'webclude' feature
• Support for vanity dns hosts (example: i.knew.you.were.afraid.org) currently 98,480 domains in the shared pool
• Fast and easy setup process. Setup an account in less than 5 minutes
• Extremely reliable, fast, and redundant hosting, and interface
• All updates go live instantaneously