Network equipment upgrade
The network works, 1C opens, users are happy. The picture is found all the time. It seems that the administrator's life was a success. That’s what half, if not two-thirds of beginners and fairly advanced system administrators think so. Many of us do not even think about what is in the network cabinets in the office, at best, controlling what is in the server. This approach is especially dangerous for your work (fired) and for the work of your organization (will rise). If everything works, it's time to upgrade the equipment.
It is amazing, but often the opening of the network cabinet occurs at the very moment when it is urgently necessary to introduce this or that technology, but its implementation is slowed down or becomes impossible precisely because of outdated network equipment. Worse, but not less often, network cabinets open in search of a burned-out media converter / switch / access point, when the work of the whole department, and sometimes the entire company, arises.
How to understand that the network equipment on the network needs to be updated and when to start it? How to approach the issue?
The answer is simple - you need to update the equipment constantly, cyclically, with a margin. However, everything depends on your company, its size, the scope of its activities, the prospects for its growth and growth of the local network, which is not always interconnected with each other, used and planned to use network technologies, budget, approach to the allocation of funds for IT and hundreds of other factors . I offer you several criteria that can assist in understanding the need to update network equipment and the reasoning of the update to the owner.
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Security is internal and external. External security usually begins with a router, internal with a switch and access points. If the issue of protecting access points is repeatedly obmusoleen, and a baby knows about protection from the Internet, only a few people think about the protection of LAN ports. Answer the following questions:
Test questions:
A list of questions:
The zoo is a great place to spend a weekend, especially now, in the spring. If you like a zoo, then you will not be confused by the presence in the same closet of D-Link, Planet and Cisco. In general, this confusion should be avoided. The fact is that it is difficult to equally well and quickly own different firmware from different manufacturers. In the zoo there is always a chance to stumble upon various implementations of the same standard by vendors. I strongly recommend spending a lot of time selecting the right equipment from one manufacturer and checking compatibility.
The budget is one of the criteria for the need and speed of network updates. You are a system administrator. You must not solve problems, but warn them. You are obliged to inform your management of the current state of the infrastructure and the problem areas that exist. This approach will protect you from sudden claims. If you have applied for equipment and justified its necessity, then you can safely refuse to implement this or that technology in an artisanal way before acquiring the necessary equipment.
High-quality network equipment is worth the money. Expense planning will raise your level in the eyes of management and ease your work. If you are planning to purchase 1-2 switches per month, you need to configure exactly 1-2 devices for this month. This is a very smooth and slow work, which allows you to choose the best time to replace the device, before leaving you a lot of time for its testing and configuration.
A completely different situation looks when you for one reason or another need to update an entire network segment, for example, from 5-6 end devices. Such a pace implies connecting more than 1 device per week, which does not always allow you to properly test and configure and almost never allows you to choose the optimal time for physical replacement of the device. Those. Rapid replacement of devices either causes interruption of the work of some employees, or forces IT department employees to work outside office hours (weekends / after work hours).
From the point of view of the allocation of funds, everything looks as follows: In the case of a planned upgrade of equipment, this is a planned waste of XX rubles during the UU months, which is budgeted along with the purchase of the office. In the case of upgrading equipment for the implementation of technology - this amount is converted into the amount of technology implementation. In turn, this could force a company to abandon its promising technology (ZZ), since freezing CU * XX + ZZ rubles at once can be fatal for the core business.
A simple example. IP video surveillance benefits in comparison with analog, largely due to the savings on the installation of kilometers of wires. This works if the IP camera connection infrastructure is ready. If there is no infrastructure, the cost of IP video surveillance becomes insane, even for large enterprises. This ultimately leads to double, triple and even quadruple spending.
First, money is spent on installing analog video surveillance. Then on the installation of normal network equipment in connection with the failure of the old or the introduction of IP-telephony. Then, to cover the damage from the emergency, as the analog record turns out to not see the person of the perpetrator, or nothing is visible, because there was a thunderstorm and everything was in interference, then the installation of digital video surveillance.
So, we discussed the main reasons for upgrading network equipment. Naturally there are many other reasons, and every system administrator who has passed through this will call his own. I am sure a lot of such recommendations will appear in the comments.
The described task for many seems impossible. Beat the money out of the blue? Difficult, but necessary ! First of all, you and your company.
It all starts with a plan. I offer you a standard plan that will allow you to understand where to start.
That's all.
It is amazing, but often the opening of the network cabinet occurs at the very moment when it is urgently necessary to introduce this or that technology, but its implementation is slowed down or becomes impossible precisely because of outdated network equipment. Worse, but not less often, network cabinets open in search of a burned-out media converter / switch / access point, when the work of the whole department, and sometimes the entire company, arises.
How to understand that the network equipment on the network needs to be updated and when to start it? How to approach the issue?
The answer is simple - you need to update the equipment constantly, cyclically, with a margin. However, everything depends on your company, its size, the scope of its activities, the prospects for its growth and growth of the local network, which is not always interconnected with each other, used and planned to use network technologies, budget, approach to the allocation of funds for IT and hundreds of other factors . I offer you several criteria that can assist in understanding the need to update network equipment and the reasoning of the update to the owner.
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First criterion: safety
Security is internal and external. External security usually begins with a router, internal with a switch and access points. If the issue of protecting access points is repeatedly obmusoleen, and a baby knows about protection from the Internet, only a few people think about the protection of LAN ports. Answer the following questions:
- What can a stranger with a laptop, connected to the LAN port of the accountant’s computer and knowing some basic data about the network?
- How likely is such a connection?
- Who will be affected by the attack?
The second criterion: reliability
Test questions:
- How many years has the existing equipment been operating? You can look at the accounts for the purchase or by the date of production, if the documents are not preserved.
- For how many years is it calculated? Any equipment has time to fail.
- What are the company's losses from its sudden failure? Here you need to estimate the number of connected people (including transfer) and the cost per hour of their work.
- What is the equipment replacement period and procedure? It's one thing to take a reserve off the shelf. Another thing is to run through all the agreements with the bill for a new piece of iron, wait for 3 days for the vendor to arrive and another week for the delivery of the piece of hardware itself.
- In what conditions does the equipment work? One thing is a server cabinet, another thing is a dusty ceiling.
- What is the amount of equipment on the network? Suppose you have a floor with 20 users, the entire network infrastructure is reduced to a single cabinet, in which there are \ lies three switches of 8 ports each. Will such a scheme be reliable?
The third criterion: load and potential
A list of questions:
- How loaded is this equipment? It's one thing if you have a gigabit network, no IP video surveillance, no IP telephony, and all the switches are connected to the same switch core. I can envy you, but in 70% of small and medium enterprises the situation is far from that described.
- Is there leverage to control the download? You have a fully managed gigabit network and you just need to configure QoS - you are almost at the beach and you can think about summer. Do you have a 100 megabit network that did not hear about QoS? In the near future the introduction of IP-telephony and IP video surveillance? You will soon be hot, you are on the way to the hell of hell.
- Are there levers to increase bandwidth? Well, if you have the ability to drag 100 meters of cable and connect a 100 megabit switch with its gigabit port to the core of the network. An absolutely different situation if your 100 megabit switch with its gigabit ports can only be connected with another 100 megabit switch, without gigabit uplinks.
- Will the bandwidth increase in the next year, three years, five years? If you have not implemented IP-telephony and IP-video surveillance, then you can assume that we will need, of course, speech about a 100 megabit network. Although in a gigabit network with certain configurations and the number of ports such a need may arise. Even in the absence of plans for the introduction of IP technologies, it is worth thinking about gigabit - the volume of transmitted data is steadily growing.
- Does your equipment support PoE technology? Many people do not think about this question, but tell yourself that it is easier to pull the power cord from the outlet to the IP camera or power it from the switch? Of course, you can put heels of splitters in the network cabinet, but imagine what the temperature in the cabinet and the level of clutter will be. In conclusion, I note that in modern offices PoE can be powered: Wi-FI points, IP cameras, IP phones, readers and sensors of access control systems, and even wall clocks.
Fourth criterion: equipment manufacturer
The zoo is a great place to spend a weekend, especially now, in the spring. If you like a zoo, then you will not be confused by the presence in the same closet of D-Link, Planet and Cisco. In general, this confusion should be avoided. The fact is that it is difficult to equally well and quickly own different firmware from different manufacturers. In the zoo there is always a chance to stumble upon various implementations of the same standard by vendors. I strongly recommend spending a lot of time selecting the right equipment from one manufacturer and checking compatibility.
Fifth criterion: budget
The budget is one of the criteria for the need and speed of network updates. You are a system administrator. You must not solve problems, but warn them. You are obliged to inform your management of the current state of the infrastructure and the problem areas that exist. This approach will protect you from sudden claims. If you have applied for equipment and justified its necessity, then you can safely refuse to implement this or that technology in an artisanal way before acquiring the necessary equipment.
High-quality network equipment is worth the money. Expense planning will raise your level in the eyes of management and ease your work. If you are planning to purchase 1-2 switches per month, you need to configure exactly 1-2 devices for this month. This is a very smooth and slow work, which allows you to choose the best time to replace the device, before leaving you a lot of time for its testing and configuration.
A completely different situation looks when you for one reason or another need to update an entire network segment, for example, from 5-6 end devices. Such a pace implies connecting more than 1 device per week, which does not always allow you to properly test and configure and almost never allows you to choose the optimal time for physical replacement of the device. Those. Rapid replacement of devices either causes interruption of the work of some employees, or forces IT department employees to work outside office hours (weekends / after work hours).
From the point of view of the allocation of funds, everything looks as follows: In the case of a planned upgrade of equipment, this is a planned waste of XX rubles during the UU months, which is budgeted along with the purchase of the office. In the case of upgrading equipment for the implementation of technology - this amount is converted into the amount of technology implementation. In turn, this could force a company to abandon its promising technology (ZZ), since freezing CU * XX + ZZ rubles at once can be fatal for the core business.
A simple example. IP video surveillance benefits in comparison with analog, largely due to the savings on the installation of kilometers of wires. This works if the IP camera connection infrastructure is ready. If there is no infrastructure, the cost of IP video surveillance becomes insane, even for large enterprises. This ultimately leads to double, triple and even quadruple spending.
First, money is spent on installing analog video surveillance. Then on the installation of normal network equipment in connection with the failure of the old or the introduction of IP-telephony. Then, to cover the damage from the emergency, as the analog record turns out to not see the person of the perpetrator, or nothing is visible, because there was a thunderstorm and everything was in interference, then the installation of digital video surveillance.
So, we discussed the main reasons for upgrading network equipment. Naturally there are many other reasons, and every system administrator who has passed through this will call his own. I am sure a lot of such recommendations will appear in the comments.
We plan our actions
The described task for many seems impossible. Beat the money out of the blue? Difficult, but necessary ! First of all, you and your company.
It all starts with a plan. I offer you a standard plan that will allow you to understand where to start.
- We make a network map. Which switch is connected to which channel.
- Inventory switches. How many ports \ how many current users \ how many potential users? Type of switch and its capabilities.
- We learn the plans of the company development, IT technology application, existence in this office.
- We select equipment with a margin. Here you need to pick up the equipment with a stock of features and ports. It is desirable as new as possible so that its release does not stop three months after the start of the project.
- We are preparing a plan for laying new wires to the network core (we expect the cost and optics too!).
- We are preparing a plan for the gradual replacement of equipment. The plan should look something like this:
- January - replacement of the central switch. Pros: improving the reliability of all networks and access to the server.
- February - replacement of the server switch, installation of a spare switch. Pros: increase the reliability of servers, the elimination of the point of failure through the use of hot swap.
- March - installation of a new router. Pros: increased network security from external attacks.
- April - installation of a new switch on the 2nd floor. Pros: highlighting the "division name" in a separate vlan.
- And so on.
- We give plans for the examination of acquaintances, either to a forum or to an audit company to prevent children's mistakes, which are often not taken into account due to their attachment to the conditions of a particular company, rather than standards.
- We obtain a conclusion from independent experts in one form or another. Adjust our plans.
- We prepare a report to the management and get either approval or rejection. If approved, we increase our professional level; in case of refusal, we disclaim responsibility for network equipment failures.
That's all.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/144423/
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