Kerasotes Theatres Project
Introduction:
My first large scale project for Sentinel Technologies was a complete overhaul of the IT infastructure or Kerasotes Theatres Corporate Headquarters. I've done work for several smaller area businesses, but this is, by far, my most extensive project thus far.
Company background:
Kerasotes Theatres is a third-generation family owned/operated movie theatre chain. Kerasotes operates over 500 screens in over 100 theatres in five states. So, as you can see, thier corporate headquarters has a lot to keep track of. To do so, they have a rather large computer network.
In the begining:
I began this project as an installation technician and was later promoted to Network Administrator. When we arrived at Kerasotes, thier server farm consited of three overutilized desktop PC's handling web service, email, file/print serving, and application serving. The users were using a combination of 486 and P5 Compaq Windows 95 machines. The corporate headquarters was split between two offices (accross town from each other) connected by a 64K ISDN line. The LAN consisted of 10BaseT ethernet distributed via a small hubs. Kerasotes Area Managers (mobile users) and Theatre Managers (remote sites) connected to the network by way of dial-up access through various local ISP's. They used the network primarily for email communication. Overall, the Kerasotes network was outdated, overworked, and insecure.
The new network:
Kerasotes Theatres Corporate Headquarters is now distributed among three offices, the two original Springfield offices and a new Chicago office. The main Springfield office is connected to the Chicago office via dual T-1's and to the satelite Springfield office via a single T-1. The LAN for each office has been upgraded to 100BaseT Switched Ethernet. The Top 20% of Kerasotes' theatres are connected to the Chicago office via Segmented T-1's to form a WAN. The rest of the theatres and the mobile users still connect via dial-up, however, most dial directly into the Chicago office LAN through a RAS Router. The remaining dial-up users connect using a single national carrier instead of local ISP's. Although no network is completely secure, Kerasotes new network is much more secure than before thanks to a new Firewall, which protects the entire WAN from the outside world.
The Server Farm:
Kerasotes Server farm has been updated to all Server-Grade PC's with each major service (file/print sharing, web, email, fax, etc.) having its own dedicated server. These servers are fully redunant and protected from power surges, dips, and blackouts. The servers are connected to eachother via switched gigabit ethernet allowing unhampered interaction between servers. To the right is a picture of the "Tower of Power". These rack contain Kerasotes Main servers, their UPS systems, the server farm network, and the control console. There are other racks containing backup servers, LAN network gear, and WAN and Internet Gear. The Kerasotes Server Room looks like a Dell showroom. All of the new servers are Dell PowerEdge Pentium II or Pentium III Servers. Several of these servers are dual processor systems. The software being used on the server farm is confidential for security reasons, but the Server Farm is essentially a Microsoft solution to every aspect of corporate operations.
The Workstations:
All of Kerasotes Corporate workstations have been upgraded to PentiumII 333mhz WinNT Workstations(the best available at the time). The mobile users have upgraded to PentiumII 400mhz or PentiumIII 450mhz WinNT Laptops.
Project Documentation:
As part of the projects ever-changing scope, I've written extensive On-line documentation covering the details of the project. This docuemtation is integrated into Kerasotes Corporate Intranet. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to share the docuemtation her publicly. The On-line Documentation is the property of Kerasotes Theatres, for internal use only.
Conclusion:
I'm not quite ready to close the book on this project yet... We're in the process of moving the Server Farm to the new Chicago office. Then, we will be installing workstations for the new office staff. Finally, we will simply be filling in until Kerasotes hires thier own perminent IT staff.
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