Purdue Servers and Storage Servers and Storage Part 1: A minimum of 200 words is required for each discussion question, and they must be your own words.

Purdue Servers and Storage Servers and Storage

Part 1:

A minimum of 200 words is required for each discussion question, and they must be your own words. Including figures and quotes is value-added, but they will not count against your 200 word requirement. Be sure to examine the discussion grading rubric.

Discussion Question 1:

Describe the basics of Active Directory including domain, tree, and forest. What domain model would you recommend to an organization (make and list your assumptions)?

Discussion Question 2:

Describe in detail some of the aspects of DNS related to Windows Server 2016 including zones, records, commands, etc. Explain how DNS is installed and configured on Windows Server 2016.

Implementing Ciso IP Switch Network

1. 802.1D & 802.1w (STP & RSTP)

The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), commonly referred to as 802.1D or ‘legacy’ Spanning Tree, has seen a substantial amount of change since its creation by Radia Perlman (who worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)). It wasn’t long after Spanning Tree made its debut that work on an improved version of Spanning Tree was started. The result was the creation of the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) 802.1w, where the emphasis was clearly on “Rapid” when compared to the original version of Spanning Tree. However, in both the case of the original 802.1D and then again with 802.1w, Cisco decided that it would not implement the “standard” version of either protocol. Cisco choose to implement PVST/PVST+ instead of the standard STP and Cisco then implemented RPVST/RPVST+ instead of the “standard” RSTP. In this post you should compare and contrast the features and benefits of both the standard versions of Spanning Tree with a special focus on the improvements between releases. Your post should also detail why you believe Cisco decided not to follow the IEEE standard versions, in addition to what might have led Cisco to take the standard versions, add their secret sauce, and implemented PVST/PVST+ and RPVST/RPVST+ instead.

As a brief side note, Cisco did approach the IEEE with their implementations of Spanning Tree hoping that they would be ratified as the standard, but the IEEE decided not to go down that path and instead opted for 802.1D and 802.1w.

Post Requirements: Your posts must use at least two (2) sources of information (properly cited using the American Psychological Association (APA) citation guidelines) in addition to the “hypermedia” already provided to you as part of the course. Your post must consist of a minimum of 250 words and a maximum of 500 words. Technical accuracy, proper in-text citations, and depth of coverage all play a critical role in your overall score.

2. The Spanning Tree Toolkit

n Enterprise and Campus networks (and even in some Data Center environments) Spanning Tree plays a critical role in the prevention of loops at Layer 2 – the Data Link layer. While similar to loops that you might see at Layer 3 (with IP packets), loops at Layer 2 (where the MAC address is used to forward frames around the network) can be far more dangerous and cause much more severe issues for networking professionals. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that securing your Layer 2 environment is also a critical task. It is for this reason, among a few others, that Cisco developed the Spanning Tree Toolkit (reference the “Reading Assignment” PDF from this week for an overview) which is a series of Spanning Tree related configuration options that can be used to enhance and better protect your environment from unwanted Layer 2 threats/challenges.

In this post you will be taking what you have learned about Spanning Tree and the Spanning Tree Toolkit to answer the following questions: What are some possible use cases for PortFast, BPDUGuard, and RootGuard and how would you apply these features/settings in an enterprise environment. You should also focus on why the two (2) Spanning Tree Toolkit features, namely UplinkFast and BackboneFast, are no longer needed when using Cisco’s Rapid Per-VLAN Spanning Tree (RPVST/RPVST+) and/or Multiple Spanning Tree (MST). Finally, while PortFast is not recommended for use on trunk ports, can you provide a use case for when you would want to have a trunk port with PortFast enabled.

Post Requirements: Your posts must use at least two (2) sources of information (properly cited using the American Psychological Association (APA) citation guidelines) in addition to the “hypermedia” already provided to you as part of the course. Your post must consist of a minimum of 250 words and a maximum of 500 words. Technical accuracy, proper in-text citations, and depth of coverage all play a critical role in your overall score.

3. Multiple Spanning Tree(MST)

The most recent version of Spanning Tree is 802.1s (now merged into the IEEE 802.1Q-2005 standard) Multiple Spanning Tree (MST), which is also commonly referred to as the Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) as well as Multiple Instances Spanning Tree Protocol (MISTP). Despite all the different acronyms and naming conventions, the protocol was originally a Cisco creation that, like many other IEEE networking standards (MPLS being the most notable), was adopted by the IEEE and then standardized. Many learners question why, if the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) was so great, then why did there need to be another version of Spanning Tree?

Your task for this post is to explain the advantages and the reasons why an organization would use MST in their network environment instead of other versions of Spanning Tree. Are there any trade-offs when using MST when compared to other versions of Spanning Tree? Is MST really a net-new version of Spanning Tree or is it actually using one of the previous versions of Spanning Tree under the hood? Also give consideration to MST’s applicability to multi-vendor environments and how it might solve interoperability issues.

Post Requirements: Your posts must use at least two (2) sources of information (properly cited using the American Psychological Association (APA) citation guidelines) in addition to the “hypermedia” already provided to you as part of the course. Your post must consist of a minimum of 250 words and a maximum of 500 words. Technical accuracy, proper in-text citations, and depth of coverage all play a critical role in your overall score.

4. Spanning Tree Port States

During your reading of Chapter 4 in the Foundation Learning Guide (FLG) you learned about Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) port states. For example, when you plug a server into a Cisco switch port that port will transition through the different port states on its way to the “forwarding” state. Your task for this post is to compare and contrast the different port states for STP and RSTP in addition to addressing how the use of Cisco’s port fast modifies the order of operations for the port states.

Post Requirements: Your posts must use at least two (2) sources of information (properly cited using the American Psychological Association (APA) citation guidelines) in addition to the “hypermedia” already provided to you as part of the course. Your post must consist of a minimum of 250 words and a maximum of 500 words. Technical accuracy, proper in-text citations, and depth of coverage all play a critical role in your overall score.