This posting is mostly for my own interests on Dec. 31, 2008 to see how many goals I’ve achieved; but could possibly be interesting reading for others so here goes….
1) Firewall Upgrade. I tried to do this last year but ran out of budget. Our current open source firewalls do fine with basic firewalling features but we need something with IPS/IDS, content filtering, antivirus and more. I know they are capable of doing this with extensive mods but I am finding myself with less and less time to do this; I need a nice 1u appliance that takes care of this stuff out of the box and comes with good support. I have it narrowed down to a Sonicwall 2040/3060 or a Watchguard x550e/750e (the model will depend on my total available budget; those UTM bundles are quite pricey).
2) Centralized Storage. Our storage needs have been growing considerably the past year (our mail server ran out of room 3x in the past 4 months) and in 2008 our Art’s Department is predicating even larger amounts with the addition of service archiving/streaming. Rather than just put more disks into our existing servers or begin buying DAS units I have begun to consider an iSCSI solution that would help centralize storage but also begin to make use of our mostly virtualized environment. I would love to go with Equallogic or the like but I cannot justify that expense at this time. My current scope is set on DataCore’s SANMelody products using a Dell server. It seems to be very much in my budget and offers most of the capabilities I would like to see in a SAN device; plus I am not locking myself into proprietary hardware/software solutions. This also kind of includes reviewing our current backup system and adding growth to that as well.
3) Mail. The past year I have really struggled with what mail system to use. We currently have been using Zimbra and I’ve really liked it; but my mind always struggles if we should be leaving the “Exchange crew”. I have many after-hour clients that have Exchange setups and there always seems to be something wrong with Exchange, ALWAYS! Our Zimbra server has been online since Dec. 21, 2006 and has not gone down once; our email issues are usually related to power/internet service issues. As I began to analyze it, I think I finally see that Zimbra is the better option. Reliability wise it is far superior to Exchange and offers all the features Exchange does. And they even offer non-profit (50%) discounts! We have been running the open-source version but within the next month I will be purchasing the “for-profit” version that includes things like live backup/restores, something we currently don’t have! Am I crazy?
4) Network Upgrades. Our switches are old-school 3coms from years ago that are EOL and showing their age, plus they are 10/100. My goal is to replace everything with gigabit switches as well as find an affordable Layer 3 switch for our core. Also I’d like to roll out more vlans, we currently only have 2.
5) Desktop Standardization. The majority of our staff desktops are various makes/models that were purchased before I came to NCC. My goal is to at least replace the full-time staff desktops with standard hardware during this year.
6) Redundant Internet. Our T-1 has been pretty reliable; usually only down maybe 2-3 times a year. When it is down it literally cripples the staff in their ability to work. We also have a preschool and private Christian academy that use our network and they severely suffer when the internet stops working as well. This also kind of tags along with my “data center” posting for our mail/web servers. Comcast seems to offer a good package for us so thats my first stop.
Those are some of the “big” goals for the year. I have a host of smaller little stuff that needs to get done but these 6 items are at the top of my goal AND budget list for the year!
