Download 148215_it overview 012807 v01

Information Technology Overview
Pg 1
Infrastructure
• Current website code is the result of 4+ years of
accumulated band-aids, hurried projects, and various
developers
• Resulted in a monolithic design with
– No consolidation of identical functionality
– Unused code that serves no current purpose
– Inefficient code both in its load on systems and ease of routine
changes
• A systematic re-write of each subsystem is needed
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User
Credit card
Subscriptions
Content management
Reports
Campaigns and Mail-outs
Products
Templates
Publishing.
Pg 2
Current Database
• Current structure consists of two databases
– Content
• Naturally evolved form for the last 5 years
• Suffers primarily from scalability
• All content is stored in a single table with the body of features as a text
object field
– Very large table - 100 megabytes and growing
– Direct impact on content searches and building filtered lists of content
based on date or other criteria
• Moving the content body into a separate table so that it is only touched
during full article viewings or full-text searches will have a definite
performance impact
• Changing from Text BLOB field type to VarChar may have a similar impact
– User Accounts and Subscription Information
• Developed by Austin Data Works
• Database is much more complicated
• Indexing is lacking on almost all tables; affects performance of most
common queries
• Record keeping is shoddy or non-existent for tracking who and when
regarding last changes
• Historical statistics such as subscription totals and account histories are
impossible or un-reliable
• There is a distinct lack of granularity when attempting to define limits of
content access for different subscription types
Pg 3
Virtual Protocol Networking
• Remote access to office network is
currently limited to email, remote desktop
access to accounting software, analyst
forums, and production publishing system
• Some traffic is potential unencrypted to
preserve functionality with clients
• Hotels and other Internet Service
Providers often block ports that limit or
block email connectivity
• A true end-to-end VPN is needed
– Ensures encryption
– Bypasses problems caused by ISPs and hotels
blocking connection types
Pg 4
System Hardware and Software
• Web Server
– Static Content, production-site front-end
– Hardware
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Dell Poweredge 6600
2 Intel 2GHZ Xeon CPUs
2 gigabytes RAM
67 gigabyte cached RAID 5, 3 10k RPM drives
– Software
• Operating System
– Linux – 2.6 series kernel
• Web Server
– Apache web server 2.0.58
• Web Site development language
– PHP 4.4.4-pl6 and PHP 5.1.6-pl6
• Outgoing mail MTA for mail outs
– Postfix 2.2.10
• PHP script caching
– Eacellerator 0.95
( migrating to PHP 5 )
Pg 5
System Hardware and Software
• Web Server
– Static Content, production-site front-end
– Hardware
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Dell Poweredge 6600
2 Intel 2GHZ Xeon CPUs
2 gigabytes RAM
67 gigabyte cached RAID 5, 3 10k RPM drives
– Software
• Operating System
– Linux – 2.6 series kernel
• Web Server
– Apache web server 2.0.58
• Web Site development language
– PHP 4.4.4-pl6 and PHP 5.1.6-pl6
)
• Outgoing mail MTA for mail outs
– Postfix 2.2.10
• PHP script caching
– Eacellerator 0.95
( migrating to PHP 5
Pg 6
System Hardware and Software
• DB Server
– Customer user accounts, content
database
– Hardware
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Dell Poweredge 6600
4 Intel 2GHZ Xeon CPUs
4 Gigabytes RAM
67 gigabyte cached RAID 5 , 3 10k RPM drives
– Software
• Operating System
– Linux – 2.6 series kernel
• Database Server
– MySQL 4.1.21 – MyISAM and InnoDB
storage engines
Pg 7
System Hardware and Software Continued
• Mail server
• Corporate mail delivery, virus and spam handling, internal analyst
forums, web based email
– Hardware
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Dell Poweredge 2600
2 Intel Xeon 2.4 gigahertz CPUs
2 Gigabytes RAM
67 gig SCSI system drive, 136 gig OS based RAID 5 ( 4 SCSI 10K rpm drives )
– Software
• Operating System
– Linux – 2.6 series kernel
• Mail MTA
– Postfix 2.2.10
• SPAM and virus
– Amavisd-new 2.4.1
» Spamassassin 3.1.7
» ClamAV 0.88.7
» Razor 2.82
» DCC 1.3.31
• Web Mail
– Horde IMP 4.1.3
• IMAP and POP3
– Courier IMAP 4.0.4
• Analyst forums
– PHPbb
Pg 8
System Hardware and Software Continued
• IBM xSeries
– PDC for 2003 domain and statistics
processing/ CIFS shared drives and
home directories
– Hardware
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IBM xSeries
1 Intel 2.80 Ghz Xeon
1 gigabyte RAM
33 GIG scsi
– Software
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MS Server 2003
Services for UNIX
NIS Server
Backup DNS Server
Pg 9
System Hardware and Software Continued
• Yorktown
– DNS server, campaign mailouts
– Hardware
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Dell Poweredge 2600
2 Intel 2.4ghz CPUs
1 gigabyte RAM
67 gigabyte SCSI
– Software
• Operating System
– Linux – 2.6 series kernel
• Campaign mailout MTA
– Qmail – 1.0.3
• Campaign mailout list management
– EZMLM 0.53/ EZMLM-IDX 0.40
• DNS Server
– Bind 9.3.2
Pg 10
System Hardware and Software Continued
• Firewall
– Low-end clone PC
– Smoothwall 3.x
• BDC / Print Server
– IBM Thinkcentre desktop
– Windows Server 2003
• Quickbooks / CIFS Share
– Dell Dimension desktop
– Windows Server 2003
Pg 11
Other IT/System Shortfalls
• No System Management Server for Desktop Maintenance
and Audit
• No Logging Server and Intrusion Detection system
• No Exchange Server
• Phone System near max capacity
• Current Servers are older generation and heavily taxed
• No Staging Servers
• Filemaker DB Software is antiquated and labor intensive to
manipulate
• No Client back-up system
• Austin backbone needs more bandwidth
• Virus protection is server and email based vs. enterprise
Pg 12
Business System Needs
• Marketing does not have ability to create custom emailing lists
• Legacy campaign lists are maintained independently vs. a single
relational database
• Need effective, real-time reporting tools
• No method to effectively discern site visits by topic within specific
parameters
• No ability to run credit authorization process prior to renewal
resulting in revenue disruption and manual intervention
• Need user friendly interface to allow marketing to easily create
campaign
• Customer account section needs improvements
• Need Customer Service ticketing system; essentially a manual
process with no tracking
• Legacy website content not archived; link simply removed
– Wastes storage space
– Customers can access if they know URL creating potential content
issues
• The Website is seven years old; functionality, user interface,
content and graphics need to be addressed
• Others need to be defined
Pg 13