Brief Outline

Ladyhaye is a pet travel and pet housing facility situated in Blindley Heath. It has been a family run business for over 35 years and is looking to expand in various areas of its technology to assist the running of the business and its service to their customers.

Their administration area consists of two offices with a total of 8 workstations running from a Windows Server located in the Managers office. Staff accommodation is also situated on this site in the event for any immediate requirement for the staff to be present out of normal working hours
.

Objectives

The office workstation specifications were initially very varied with operating systems ranging from Windows ME, 2000 and XP, these were all connected to back to a Windows Server through only a 10mbps connection. The Server itself was serving e-mail out using a VPOP exchange server to its workstations and also used as the primary data store with only a limited amount of space left onto it.

The network consisted of a number of printers that were being shared off of nearly all the individual workstations, meaning that certain workstations would need to be switched on to allow the users to print.

There were connectivity issues to some of the printers and also the workstations being able to access the data on the server.

Chalkhill Systems identified the following objectives to be covered:

• Standardisation to the specifications of the workstations
• Increase Speed to the network
• Make relevant devices independent to the workstations
• Correct any obsolete configurations on the network
• Secure network
• Ensure easy future support

Results

The first objective was to standardise the network to one operating system. Five of the workstations were upgraded Windows XP Professional to remove any incompatibilities over the network and allow share access to be quicker and easier. As the systems in place were from a mixture of manufacturers and ages their hardware specifications were completely altered. Sufficient RAM upgrades were administered to the slower workstations to ensure that they met speed requirements.

The problems relating to intermittent network access to various devices and the data on the server, was largely due to a number of slow 10mbps switches all up linked to each other. This was resolved by installing a single multi-port fast Ethernet 100mbps switch which allow more bandwidth for activity across the network and to allow sufficient localisation of cabling.

Small print-servers were configured and installed onto the main printers around the office to make them individually part of the network rather than being reliant on any workstation for other users to print making printer access much more robust.

The users were logging onto the workstations and the applications using usernames and passwords of colleagues who no longer worked for the company, the directory in the server and the applications were corrected, removing previous users and allowing the new staff to log on them as themselves with the correct access rights.

All of the workstations were installed with software firewalls and ant-virus to protect their systems against threats making their web and network access reassuringly safe.

To ensure future support of the network, remote access has been administered onto the system allowing our engineers to support them quickly and efficiently through one phone call and allows us to perform on-going maintenance and servicing to their network

The results of this case study is that Chalkhill Systems have turned the network into a stable, robust system with the reassurance that professional engineers are able to monitor and maintain the system without the requirement of an engineer present onsite.

Additional Services

Some of the staff addressed the issue of requiring internet access from their accommodation situated on the grounds. To resolve this problem a Wireless Access Point was added to the network and secured to allow the Laptops from this accommodation to access the Broadband and e-mail securely outside of the office.

Testimonial

“Since Chalkhill Systems harmonised our network and IT infrastructure, our business has had 100% stability and reliability. The great thing about Chalkhill Systems is their ability to communicate at all levels and be on hand whenever we need them. Their commitment to customer care is 110%. Thank you for your service to date and we all look forward to working with you in the future.”, Nigel Hurst, Managing Director