Crete LLC’s Windows Server 2012 Network Proposal Crete LLC is a business organization that produces and distributes solar panel for the consumer market. In the past few years, the solar panel market has experienced tremendous growth because of the increased consumer demands for solar panels. Consequently, Crete LLC seeks to establish itself as a major industry player in order to meet the high demand for solar panels. Therefore, the company seeks to establish offices in three locations i.e. Los Angeles, Houston, and Dallas with the main staff situated at the Houston and Dallas offices. Crete LLC needs to adopt technology in order to enhance success and profitability in the market. Therefore, data security is a priority given that the organization is likely to experience issues relating to patent and trademarks. The sales personnel at firm’s Los Angeles office need secure remote access to the Houston office. This report provides a technology proposal for Crete LLC in light of its current implementation or concerns relating to technology adoption.

Windows Server 2012 Network

As previously indicated, technology adoption is an important factor toward enhancing the ability of Crete LLC to achieve its business objectives and goals. Since the company focuses on expanding to different offices in different locations in the future, a robust implementation of technology would help in enhancing the success of expansion initiatives and overall organizational success and profitability. Based on the company’s current implementation and concerns, a robust implementation of Windows Server 2012 is crucial towards success of expansion and profitability of the firm. Van Vugt (2014) states that Windows Server is increasingly vital in the changing information technology landscape. Windows Server 2012 is becoming more important in the modern business environment because of its significant features and improvements in line with the changing IT landscape. Therefore, robust implementation of Windows Server 2012 will help Crete LLC achieve its business and technical objectives. The robust implementation must ensure that security and general administration features of Windows Server 2012 are taken into consideration. For this company, Windows Server 2012 will cover various issues relating to security and general administration including Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, File Services, Remote Services, and WSUS (Windows Server Update Services).

Active Directory

Van Vugt (2014) states that Active Directory is one of major features or points of Windows Server 2012. This is primarily because the feature offers Kerberos-based authentication services that can be utilized by office users and others. For Crete LLC, Active Directory will be utilized as a centralized platform for authentication and authorization. In this case, the company should implement regional domain model since it seeks to expand to different offices in the near future. Mathers et al. (2017) states that Microsoft recommends a regional domain model for a company or organization with a large main office centrally and dispersed branch offices across the country. Since Dallas and Houston offices will act as the central offices for Crete LLC, a regional domain model would help in interconnected of the three offices in the different locations in the country. The suitability of a regional domain model for this company is also evident in the role it will play in maintaining a stable environment over time.

Through this model, the company will have a forest root domain with one or more regional domains as shown in Figure 1 below. In essence, one of the company’s offices will be the forest root while the other offices will be designated as regional domain branches in the domain structure. In this case, the Houston office will act as the forest root whereas Los Angeles and Dallas offices will be the regional domain trees. Since a regional domain model will be utilized, the domain names will vary...

Houston office domain will be Houston.crete.com, Dallas will be Dallas.crete.com, and Los Angeles will be LA.crete.com. The domain controllers will be at the three locations or offices since this will help enhance productivity, lessen login process, and cost-savings. Given that the company seeks to have main staff at Dallas and Houston offices, Read-only Domain Controller (RODC) will be established at the Los Angeles office. According to Grillenmeier (2008), Read-only Domain Controller are suitable for branch locations or offices that need robust, rapid, and reliable authentication services. Los Angeles office will not have many users since its not considered as a main location, which makes it ideal for RODC.
Figure 1: Regional Domain Model for Crete LLCHouston.crete.com

Dallas.crete.com

LA.crete.com

Domain controllers must be assigned some specific roles for the network to function properly in an Active Directory environment (Tulloch, 2004). For Crete LLC, assigning specific Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles is essential towards the proper and effective functioning of it’s network. As the main offices, the company’s Dallas and Houston offices will be assigned PDC Emulator, which is an FSMO role that enforces account lockout, synchronizes time for all domain controllers in the root domain, and manages password changes. These offices will also be assigned Infrastructure Master role to help promote cross-domain object references. On the other hand, the Los Angeles office will be assigned RID Master role because its not one of the major offices at Crete LLC.

Windows Server Backup feature will be employed for backup and recovery of the organization’s Active Directory. The plan for Active Directory backup and recovery for Crete LLC will entail securing the backups on site either at an off-site location or in a safe. Additionally, the backups will be scheduled regularly to protect against any potential disaster that could occur. This would be part of a safe measure towards protecting the organization’s Active Directory.

Group Policy

Group Policy is a term that is utilized by Microsoft for its servers and emerges from the idea the use of these servers entails grouping together policy settings (Moskowitz, 2012). Therefore, Group Policy is a concept that is used to refer to rules that are applied and implemented at various levels of Active Directory. The policy settings that are group together under this concept are rules that must be complied with by users of the systems and its computers. As a result, Group Policy is essential towards enhancing power and efficiency during manipulation of client systems.

For Crete LLC, Group Policy is essential toward provide rules and guidelines that are applied to different Active Directory levels. Moreover, Group Policy will help to maintain the security of the network. Through applying the rules and guidelines at different levels, Crete LLC will maintain and enhance the security of it’s network. The need to maintain and enhance network security demonstrates the essence of Group Policy for this company.

One of the settings that might be considered via Group Policy is “Rename the Local Administrator Account”, which should not only be enabled but also utilized. This setting is essential toward enhancing the security of Crete LLC’s network because the default administrator setting can be easily used by attackers to gain unauthorized access to the network and system. Attackers can easily access the network and cause damages because the default setting makes it easy for them to know the username account, which is half the work. Secondly, “Disable the Guest Account” is a crucial setting that might be considered through Group Policy. Group Policy gives network administrators the ability to lockdown user passwords through determining complexity, minimum length, and attempts users can…