Tony Chips Independent Company Website Tony's Chips independent company Website

Scenario

Tony Chips has recently bought a new independent company and the company is interested to move its old Website from external hosted solution to internal web hosting. Meanwhile, the company management is concerned about the redundancy of the Website and insists that the Website should have a back up in case the original Website goes down. More importantly, the site will be designed to allow customer to order goods and services online.

Fundamental objective of this project is to discuss the strategy to build website architecture with minimal downturn to assist Tony Chips to develop a dynamic website that will assist the company to enjoy online business advantages. The paper uses SDLC (system development life cycle) for website development.

Building of Web Architecture

Technical expertise is required to support and maintain online business as well as planning and implementing the existing business site. Organization needs to include several components to build a dynamic website that would serve a business purpose. (Shelly, & Rosenblatt, 2011). Thus, the resources to build a new website must compose the following hardware components.

Routers and firewalls

Load balancers

Frond ends and web servers

Database servers

Application servers

Storage hardware

File servers

The best functionality of hardware requires the following software:

Operating system software

Web server software

Application server software

Database and applications software

Storage management software such as backup and recovery, failover and clustering. (Veritas, 2000).

Efficient assembling of hardware and software components requires a redundancy equipment to protect the website from failure as well as achieving scalable processing for load peak. To keep downturn as low as possible, organization needs to provide the following support:

Fast recovery from outages if they do occur

Good administrative policies and tools to enhance system maintenance

Support for online administrative activities as much as possible

A high mean time is necessary between the failures for all hardware components

Storage availability

To achieve a minimal downturn organization must reside a critical data in a highly available storage. To avoid the disk failure, critical data must be stored in RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disk or mirrored configurations. RAID is a storage devise system used to withstand system failure. Moreover, RAID is a storage device that could be reloaded or replaced without the loss of data.

Administrative downtime

Online administrative support is critically important. Administrative support is critical to enhance back up of data. To enhance data backup, defragment storage should be available to ensure 24-hour system availability, it is important to create an administrative support environment that would optimize the system without causing unnecessary downturn. Organization needs to use third mirror to create a copy of data used for intensive activities, which include back-ups, testing and reporting. Moreover, organization could use the clustering software to mount a data from different host to assist the organization to enjoy "fail over" applications in case of data disaster.

Highly storage configuration is also required to recover data from errors or accidental loss. To maintain backup procedure, there is a need to use the database to store data. Typically, Oracle database has special data backup and recovery facilities. Oracle-specific back-up tools could support online back-ups and recovery system.

Apart from using onsite backup, it is also critical to use the off-site backup system to protect data from the localized disaster. The company should use physical back up media for off-site back up. The physical back up media is essential elements that could be used for data recovery plan. Off-site backups involve storing off-site copies of data in different server away from on-site to assist the organization to restart the critical data in case of accident. Maintaining off-site copies of the backup data will assist the organization to restart operations quickly in case of data failure.

Operating System

To develop a dynamic and functional website, the choice of good operating system is very critical. This project suggests Microsoft Window 7 to be used as the operating system for the Website. Typically, Window 7 offers the following benefits: Security Platform includes:

Internet Connection Firewall

Antivirus Software

User-Level Access Control

IEEE 802.1x Security Protocol

Malicious Software Removal Tool

UAC security level

More importantly, Window 7 operating system will assist the company to enjoying the networking features that offer the following benefits:

Networking Wizards

Administration Tools

Network Diagnostics

The Window 7 also offers the following technical and helps support:

Telephone Support

System Restore

Remote...

One of the benefits of PHP is that it is able to support other hardware features such Window 7, SQL, and other hardware protocols that would be used to develop this website.
2. Evaluation of Self-hosting the Site

Self-hosting is the process of moving the website in-house rather than allowing the external service provider to manage the new site. The benefit of self-hosting is that the organization will have the total control of its web server. One of the major benefits that the organization will enjoy from self-hosting is the security of the data transferred across the network. It is essential to realize that data protection is critical part of web application. In the present business environment, data has become an asset. With web application, organizations will need to store sensitive data in the server and to protect the organizational data from compromising, self-hosting is the best because the organization will be able to protect its data from external intruder. By allowing the external provider to host the web, an organization may face the danger of possible data theft.

Moreover, the organization will be able to guarantee better web performances by hosting web in-house. However, the organization should integrate extra capacity to ensure faster connection of the website. Additionally, hosting website in-house will make organizations to ingrate the firewall system that would protect the organizational network from external intruder.

Despite the benefits that organization will enjoy from transferring the website in-house, there are challenges that organization will face from transferring the website in-house. First, the organization will need to hire more IT staff that will be ready to manage the system effectively in order to avoid unforeseen network failure. Typically, the organization will need to hire a stand-by system administrator to remove exploit from the system in case it occurs. Moreover, the system administrator will have the required skills to configure the system to achieve the optimal performances. More importantly, the system administrator will need to ensure that the security of the website is intact to avoid external intruder getting access into the company data.

While transferring website in-house will be advantageous for the company because the organization will have total control of overall website resources, however, the organization will need to incur additional costs to effectively manage its website resources.

3. Gantt chart using Microsoft Project

Gantt chart in Fig 1 reveals the standard format of the project, which displays the project schedule information, and listing of the project activities from start to finish dates. This project will start on January 2013 and end by May 2013. The project tasks will follow SDLC methodology, which include initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing. Moreover, the Gantt chart reveals the full concept, website design and website development.

4 Justification of System Architecture Selected

One of the system architecture is router. Typically, router is a device that connects one or more IP addresses. The router is responsible to deliver the packet across the network, as well as delivering the packet in a timely manner. The router will also be effective to connect LAN across the internet. It is essentially to realize that the effectiveness of the internet communication depends on the ability of router for forward packet in an efficient manner. Thus, the organization will enjoy the following benefits with the integration of router in the website architecture:

First, the company will enjoy steady and reliable network availability at all time.

Moreover, the router will provide greater integrated services for video, data, and voiced over the wireless and wired network. Additionally, the router will assist the organization to mitigate the impact of virus, worm, and other attack on the company website. The router will permit or deny the forwarding packet into the website thereby protecting the website from any unforeseen attack.

The company also requires the database server to improve the company database performances within the network environment. The database will be used to store data especially the customer data. The benefits that the organization will derive from the integration of database is that the company will have easy access to the data as well as having freedom to access the email anywhere

Moreover, scalability and security are the other advantages that the company will enjoy with the integration of database in the website. All the data will be backed up using database server. Thus, the company will have opportunity continue the business operations in case of hardware failure.

Additionally, the database will assist the company to enjoy easy sharing of data that will allow the company to receive and transfer data in an efficient way. Scalability is another benefit that the company will enjoy and the system will allow easy integration of website.

5. Illustration of the system Architecture

The fig 2 illustrates the system architecture of the company website that includes the company server, database system, exchange server, and other…