Graded Assignment

A small, growing startup (50 employees) is setting up its IT infrastructure. They need to choose between physical servers, on-premise virtual machines, or cloud-based VMs (IaaS). They also need to set up internal network services.

Reflect on these key decisions:

1. Server Choice: What are the main trade-offs the company should consider when deciding between physical servers, on-premise VMs, and cloud-based VMs (IaaS)? Can you think of an advantage and disadvantage of each of these options? ==Cost, performance and maintenance==

2. Networking: 

   • How can the company ensure that employee workstations automatically get IP addresses? ==DHCP==
   • Can you briefly explain the roles of DHCP and DNS in this setup? ==If you enable DHCP, your computers will be leased an IP address from a DHCP server. ​They’ll automatically get IP addresses and ​you don’t have to worry about manually setting addresses. When you connect to a network, ​you’re using the DNS server address that ​was provided by the router you connected to. ​It updates your network setting to ​use that DNS server address, ​which is usually your ISP’s DNS server. ​From there, you’re able to ​access pretty much any website. ==
   • Do you understand the difference between static and dynamic IP addressing, and why a company might choose one over the other? ==When you use the static IP address, you have to keep track of every IP address you ​assigned a computer and manually entered in the network settings. If you enable DHCP, your computers will be leased an IP address from a DHCP server. ​They’ll automatically get IP addresses and ​you don’t have to worry about manually setting addresses. ​==

3. Troubleshooting: What is one important step this company could take before problems occur, that would make future network troubleshooting easier? ==Setup a local DNS server==