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Using Windows Server 2003 Planning Tools and Documentation • Chapter 1
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There might be existing technologies that will need to be maintained and supportedeven after the new design is in place. Be sure to include budget information for performingall necessary upgrades and providing ongoing support for your legacy systems.The next step in designing your network is to understand where your users are located.Understanding the physical geography of your company and its employees is critical indesigning a cost-effective local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN).You’llnot only need to determine where your users are located, but also the location of the ser-vices that they need to access. A geographically diverse user base can easily necessitate theinstallation of dedicated WAN links or a virtual private network (VPN). Understandingwhere your users and resources are located will also help you to determine the amount ofnetwork bandwidth that your design will require. Network planning tools such as a net-work traffic analyzer will help you to determine the amount of traffic generated by yourusers and clients.To determine bandwidth requirements, you must consider current trafficlevels while always leaving room for growth.
Analyzing Organizational Needs
Understanding the needs of a business or other organization is a fundamental step in creatinga well-designed network. In this section, we’ll take a look at information flow—recognizingwhere data originates in your network and how it should be disseminated to the users andcustomers who require it. Next, we’ll discuss the importance of understanding an organiza-tion’s management structure and how you can use that information to design appropriate net-work services.We’ll also discuss some common priorities for an organization’s managementgroup, as well as its more task- and project-oriented users.These range from factors such asperformance and availability that affect an entire network, to more specific services and appli-cations such as e-mail, file sharing, and audio/video services. All of these issues should betaken into account to ensure the overall success of your network design.
Information Flow Factors
If the “Information Age” moniker is to be believed, it only stands to reason that access to acompany’s information needs to be a top priority of any network design.This means thatall necessary personnel need on-demand access to their critical data in order to understandhow their company’s profits and losses are occurring, to call up a customer’s account infor-mation at a moment’s notice, and to collate information from multiple sources to allow foreffective decision making.The most successful organizations are those whose front-lineemployees have instant access to the information they need, rather than waiting for man-agers or central “gatekeepers” to disseminate scheduled or ad hoc reports.Understanding information flow requires you to determine where your users arelocated,
whatdata they need to access,
when they need it, and howthey need to access it tobest perform their jobs—whether that job is running a quarterly sales report or a high-school fundraiser. Providing appropriate information flow can involve physical considera-tions such as sufficient bandwidth allocation, along with logical controls within the
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