Define the Services and Requirements

You have to design a new data center infrastructure that will support the emerging needs of your organization. This hands-on assignment is the first step in that process.

Use your existing environment if you’re an end-user, the environment of one of your customers, or maybe a sample project you were asked to work on and document the service requirements:

• What services will the new data center offer?
• How will the users consume the services?
• What level of self-provisioning and automation will you offer?
• Will the users deploy application stacks themselves?
• Will they manage their own security and network services?
• Disaster recovery requirements.

Based on these requirements, try to estimate the infrastructure requirements:

• Number of servers and storage nodes;
• Security- and network services needed to support the user requirements;
• Storage access technology;
• Required number of network ports;
• Estimated network bandwidth (internal and external);
• Virtual networking needs;
• IP address mobility requirements.