Network Infrastructure for Tailspin Toys

The purpose of this project was to create a network infrastructure for Tailspin Toys which is a large manufacturer and importer of toys, educational products and sports equipment. This network infrastructure will be designed to meet the needs of a new business venture with Fabrikam Corporation, who will work on a new line of sports uniforms and be sold by Tailspin Toys. My team and I created a work plan with specific milestones to be completed in a reasonable time frame.

Our goals:

1. Configure a network of 5 servers isolated from all other servers in our environment.
2. Servers must have 2012R2 Core installed via Bootable USB drives.
3. A PowerShell script must be developed to configure the network settings on the servers.
4. Install a Forest Root Domain called Tailspintoys.com on one of the servers with DNS.
5. Install 2 Domain Controllers with DNS in a child domain called corp.tailspintoys.com.
6. A CSV file of users will need to be added to AD using a script.

My favorite part about this project was working with my team and identifying skill sets. Everyone is not an expert so it was a great experience to learn from one another and understanding each other’s strengths. Looking back, I wish I had more time to work on this project. We had to complete this project within a week so the project was split up and my focus was to create a PowerShell script to import a CSV file with a list of users and to sort them into groups within Active Directory. With more time I would challenge myself to complete the project on my own. The most difficult part about this project was to make decisions which required a group vote. Most of the time, each person wanted to try a different method, or take a different route to solve the problem. While it is a good way to discover multiple ways to do the same thing, a lot of time was lost in decision making.

Working on this project has helped develop my problem solving skills. I had to learn how to create a script of PowerShell commands. It seemed simple at first because of the amount of resources online. The hard part was to conceptually understand different lines of code and the result of specific code. Variables are often used in PowerShell to minimize the amount of typing, which are then used logically to create more advanced functions. After looking at many examples, I was able to recreate my own version of importing a CSV file and extracting the information I wanted to create groups in Active Directory.