company splitting in half - need advice!

[FastLearner]

Hi all. I have just been handed a huge project that seems to come straight from a college IS textbook, and I am looking for any alternative ideas on how I can tackle it.

I work for a company of roughly 60 employees, and all servers and clients, along with our SAP system, belong to a single NT domain. at the moment, all servers, including DC and BDC are running Windows 2000 Server (SP4). Basically what is happening is that my company is splitting in 2 parts (Engineering and Production) and the Production department (roughly half of our employees) will be moving in a few months to a building approximately 5 miles away. I should point out that a requirement is that our current backup system (Veritas Backup Exec) should be located at the new facility. This software happens to run on our backup domain controller.

Although I am fairly certain that a leased line is in our best interest, for which I have started asking for quotes from local providers (I've been asking about 2MB lines to give myself a rough idea, even though 2MB is probably insufficient) but that's actually outside the scope of this question. My main problem is figuring out what to use in the way of routers, switches, software, and general network technology to make all this happen.

The production department has rougly 35 PCs and laptops, but the real chatters are our robots and production scanners, which are constantly chatting with our SAP system throughout the day. We also have only one file server, which will be staying (physically) at our current location.

Then there is our telephone system. We use the Alcatel Omni PCX system, and I would like to keep everyone connected as well, without having to change anything in our system.

More or less, I would like the move to be transparent to all users, but I have the feeling this is just not physically possible.

I am in Germany so the devices also need to run on 230 VCA.

I have truthfully never tackled such a large project with so many components, and I am really interested in hearing any ideas in the way of routers, switches, software, and general network technology (ATM?) that might make all of this work. I should also say that we prefer HP and IBM over Cisco, for the sheer price difference (we just got 5 blade servers from IBM and are very happy with them so far during our testing).

Lastly, there does not need to be videoconferencing capability between the 2 offices.

Thanks for any input...:D

[Roady]

Hi mate I hope I can be of assistance to your project, I am a junior network engineer studying my CCNA so I can give this advice.

Firstly the released line is a good idea but get quotes for bandwidth usage allowance only, where you only pay for what you use as well as an annual fee and see whats the cheapest. T1 lines (1.544mbs) can be broken down fractionaly into just what you use/need and im sure you can also do this with a T3 48mbs line. Choose which one depending on what roughly your amount of data transfer will be when the company is split. Some companies are leanient if you slightly go over the allowance payed for. It can be worth your while getting a fractional T3 rather than a full T1. So bare this in mind and ask the ISP's. Looking at the size of your company though a fractional T1 would be sufficeint.

As for the hardware point of view and the size of you company you will need two routers* and depending on how many PC's you have on site depends on how many switches you will need at each site. For example you said 60 users but if they all might not need a PC, but if they do you probably need 2 switches in your network cabinet (4 in total, 2 at each site). I think the two CSU/DSU which connects the two routers virtually will be installed by the ISP.

*If you are having a few subnets at each site then these need to be split by routers, so bare that in mind.

Hardware list
Routers x 2
Switches at most 4
CSU/DSU - installed by ISP at each of your two comapny locations.

I hope the above info is at least a start for you

Regards

Roady

[FastLearner]

Thanks Roady. I appreciate all the advice. I will definitely take your advice into account as we move forward with the project. Wish me luck...:)

[Roady]

Your welcome my friend, just remeber its only a guide a gave you but you never know I may of been spot on with the info.

Let me know how things are going should be interesting. When are you starting the project? I would like to help you more if I can.

Regards