Lakeside IT as a Service (ITaaS) Cloud IT Solution
CPA Accounting Firm with 40 Employees
The first solution we present is our Lakeside IT is a service Cloud platform which includes all the following in a fixed rate monthly plan with no upfront costs. Included in this solution is hosting for a Website, Email, File, Print services, Dropbox service, LDAP with optional two factor authentication, Databases, Virtual desktops with thin client hardware, VoIP phone service, wireless Mesh WiFi networking, Lake View monitoring/alerting service, and Lakeside Cloud Internet. The internet contains redundant connections with 2 gigabits of internet bandwidth. All of the critical infrastructure is fault tolerant including the Servers, Desktops, VPN and Internet. With an extra thin client, phone and monitor in case of part failure that is just plug and play. Unlimited tech support time for any and all issues that may arise. Offering as close as technically possible to 100% up time. No more ever-changing budget to manage or upfront costs. Never again will you need to upgrade hardware and scaling up or down is as simple as a mouse click. We will even run new cables if necessary, with a dedicated lines to each desk for the phone and computer. However, the cost of the cables and jacks won’t be included but, the labor will be included in the fixed rate.
•40x Users Total
•36x Dual Monitor Thin Clients
•5x Single Monitor Thin Clients
•76x 19′ Flat Screen Monitors
•3x Network Printers either Color Ink jet or BW Laser (Upgrade-able to MFP with scanner copier)
•2x Wireless Access Points AC (WiFi Access)
•41x VoIP PoE Phones
•2x 48 Port 1gbit w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•2x 48 Port PoE 1gbit w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•2x Cloud Extenders
•7x Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
•40x Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
•47x Lake View Managed Services Clients
•Lakeside Redundant Cloud Internet
•Unlimited IT Support
•$10,000 MRC Total
•$120,000 Annual Total
•$360,000 36 Month Total w/ Equipment
In-House Solution Equipment Costs:
•$30,000 3x Servers for Micro Cloud
•$7200 36x Dual Monitor Thin Clients
•$600 5x Single Monitor Thin Clients
•$3800 76x 19′ Flat Screen Monitors
•$600 3x Network Printers
•$600 2x Wireless Access Points AC (WiFi Access)
•$800 2x 48 Port 1gbit w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•$1000 2x 48 Port PoE 1gbit w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•$4000 40x VoIP PoE Phones
•$4050 Monthly Equipment Cost Breakdown Total
•$1350 36 Month Total Monthly Breakdown w/ Equipment
•$48,600 Equipment Total
In-house Monthly Reoccurring Charges:
•$9000 60x Support Hours $150 MRC
•$1000 40x Phones Lines $25 MRC
•$1100 40x Desktops 7x Servers Lake View MRC
•$800 2x 1gbit Lakeside Redundant Cloud Internet $400 MRC
•$400 40x Email $10 MRC
•$50 Website MRC
•$12,350 MRC Total
•$148,200 Annual Total
•$444,600 36 Month Total
In-house Client Totals:
$16,400 MRC Total Breakdown w/ Equipment
$196,800 Annual Total w/ Equipment
$13,700 36 Month Total Monthly Breakdown w/ Equipment
$493,200 36 Month Total w/ Equipment
Cloud Hosted Equipment:
•$7200 36x Dual Monitor Thin Clients
•$600 5x Single Monitor Thin Clients
•$3800 76x 19′ Flat Screen Monitors
•$600 3x Network Printers
•$600 2x Wireless Access Points AC (WiFi Access)
•$800 2x 48 Port 1gbit w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•$1000 2x 48 Port PoE 1gbit w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•$3000 2x Cloud Extenders
•$1417 Equipment Total Monthly Breakdown
•$17,000 Equipment Total
Cloud Hosted Monthly Reoccurring Charges:
•$4000 40x Desktop as a Service (ITaaS) $100 MRC
•$1000 7x Infrastructure as a Service (ITaaS) MRC
•$4500 30x Support Hours $150 MRC
•$1000 40x Phones+Lines $25 MRC
•$1100 40x Desktops 7x Servers Lake View MRC
•$800 2x 1gbit Lakeside Redundant Cloud Internet $400 MRC
•$400 40x Email Hosting $10 MRC
•$50 Website Hosting MRC
•$12,850 MRC Total
•$154,200 Annual Total
Cloud Hosted Client Totals
•$14,267 MRC Total w/ Equipment Breakdown
•$171,204 Annual Total w/ Equipment
•$513,612 36 Month Total w/ Equipment
Conclusion
After analyzing each solution the Lakeside IT cloud made the most sense. With no upfront costs, unlimited support, and a significantly lower cost it is the best solution. It is a hands off and worry free approach that frees up time and resources. In conclusion, it helps us to stay focused on our business instead of the technology needed to run it.
Lakeside Router as a Service RaaS Solution
Regional ISP expanding in to the Chicago market
This regional internet service provider (ISP) needed a Point of Presence (PoP) in Chicago for peering meaning and exchanging data with other service and content providers. Doing so, allows them to negotiate better rates with the other providers and gives them the ability to sell internet service here in Chicago.
•2x MRC Virtual Routers 64GB RAM, 8-vCPU Cores, Full BGP Routing Tables
•2x MRC Virtual Noction Route Optimizers
•2x Switches 48 Port 10g w/ 40g Uplinks (Core)
•2x Switches 48 Port 1g w/ 10g Uplinks (Access)
•1gbit MRC Commit Transit Cogent 10g Uplink 90th Percentile
•10gbit MRC Transport Connection to Primary Market
•10gbit MRC Access to Equinix Peering Fabric
•10gbit MRC Metro Ethernet Access
Colocation Client Provides Equipment
•$1500 MRC Full Locking Rack w/ 20a 208v A/B Power
•$500 3x MRC Cross Connect Pack
•$1600 2x Switched PDUs, Zero U, 20a 208v
•$40,000 2x Core/Edge Routers 10g w/ Full BGP Routing Tables
•$10,000 2x Switches 48 Port 10g w/ 40g Uplinks (Core)
•$2000 2x Switches 48 Port 1g w/ 10g Uplinks (Access)
•$1000 MRC 1gbit Transit Lakeside BGP Mesh Blend 10g Uplink 95th Percentile
•$500 MRC 1gbit Transit Cogent 10g Uplink 90th Percentile
•10gbit MRC Transport Connection to Primary Market
•10gbit MRC Access to Equinix Peering Fabric
•10gbit MRC Metro Ethernet Access
Conclusion
By utilizing our virtual Router as a Service (RaaS) solution, this ISP was able to deploy a Point of Presence (PoP) in Chicago with no upfront equipment costs. They gained access to our route optimized Lakeside BGP blended internet service and the Equinix peering exchange without having to rent colocation space or pay for expensive cross connects. Best of all, everything was set up in a matter of weeks versus the months it could take using physical equipment. Not to mention, it could take a month alone to set up the rack and cross connects. Shipping in and setting up all the network equipment could take another month. They were able to achieve all their goals for less money, in less time, and allowing them to start turning a profit in weeks rather than months or years.
Mass File Storage Solution
Media Production Company with 95 Employees
Required a 240TB Expandable to 480TB Fault Tolerant Storage Area Network (SAN)
Cloud storage was ruled out due to the high cost with this large amount of data. EMC and Netapp had excellent solutions but were 2x-3x more money. OSnexus also allowed us to leverage off the shelf components producing even more savings.
Windows file servers were utilized because file permissions and authentication could be handled by their existing windows active directory infrastructure, thus making adding new users plus changing file and folder access permissions much easier for them. It was the same procedure they were already used to.
The expander chassis allowed for adding another 90 drives via the external SAS2 controller at a very low cost because no additional CPU, RAM, NIC, and Motherboard were required.
Brocade was chosen for the switch dubbed Ethernet fabric due to the ultra low latency, advanced storage options, and reasonable price tag. Using generic 10g twinax transceivers vs brocade branded units also generated a huge savings.
•2x 4u Supermicro 72 3.5” Double Sided Drive Bay Server Chassis (Head Unit)
•2x 2000w Supermicro Power Supplies Fault Tolerant (Per Chassis)
•Xeon 8-Core CPU, 128GB Hynix DDR4 ECC RAM (Per Chassis)
•Supermicro Motherboard Single Socket (Per Chassis)
•LSI Controller Internal SAS2 w/ Cache Vault (Per Chassis)
•LSI Controller External SAS2 w/ Cache Vault (Per Chassis)
•2x 256GB Intel SSDs in RAID 1 for the OSnexus SAN Software over CentOS Linux OS (Per Chassis)
•60x 4TB SAS2 3.5” Western Digital HDDs (Per Chassis)
•4x 15 Drive RAID 6 Arrays Stripped Forming a RAID 60 (Per Chassis)
•Intel Optane PCIe SSD 1.6TB for Read/Write Caching (Per Chassis)
•4x Intel 10g Ethernet Network Interface Cards NICs (Per Chassis)
•Out of Band Management IPMI (Per Chassis)
•2x 4u Supermicro 90 Bay Dual Sided 3.5” Drive Expander Chassis
•2x Windows Server 2016 File Server Cluster Utilizing iSCSI Mapping to the SAN
•2x Brocade VDX 6740 10g 48 Port w/ 4x 40g Uplinks Ethernet Fabric Switches
•16x 10g Twinax Transceivers Generic
•4x 40g Transceivers Generic for the Uplinks Between the Switches
Conclusion
By building the system in house utilizing off the shelf parts and using the OSnexus software we were able to save a lot of money over Netapp or EMC solutions. It contains the same specs as the Netapp or EMC solutions were $50,00 to $70,000 more. When they go to upgrade and add more storage the savings were also significant since we could use off the shelf parts and not marked up proprietary parts from the major brands. The client was very happy with the new solution and the speed increase over their old dell NAS was extreme. We also have additional feature such as boot to SAN for creating their own cloud that simply wasn’t possible with the NAS. The increase from 1gbit to 10gbit was a much-needed increase because of all the very large uncompressed 4k video files they’re uploading and downloading. Also, since everything was made redundant downtime is no longer an issue and added peace of mind considering these files are their whole business.
VoIP Telephone System Solution
Debt Collection & Consolidations Services Company with 120 Employees
A new digital phone solution was required to replace an aging analog system. Fonality was chosen for its ease of use, call recording, intercom and heads up display software that’s installed on each PC. The heads up display allows users to drag and drop calls to transfer or see who is on the phone and with whom. The system can be setup with call boomerang to try several different numbers to locate a user including office, cell and any other number desired. A mix of Aastra and Polycom phones depending on the required features for that particular user. Voicemail and fax to email was configured so that they could be accessed via the phone or email. Call groups for each department and an automated system attendant were setup to answer then route calls appropriately. QoS was utilized on the switch and firewall to place a higher priority and guaranteed throughput on voice traffic for excellent call quality.
•12x Direct Inward Dial (DIDs) or External Phone Numbers
•Unlimited SIP Trunks at $0.002 per minute
•120x Polycom/Aastra VoIP phones
2u Fonality PBX Server
•1x Modular 6 Bay Switch w/ Dual Management Card & PSU
•3x 48 Port 1gbit PoE Switch Blades w/ 10gbit Uplinks
•3x 48 Port 1gbit Switch Blades w/ 10gbit Uplinks
•120x Cat6 Ethernet Cable Drops
•3x 48 Port Cat6 Patch Panels
•120x 3ft Cat6 Patch Cables
•120x 12ft Cat6 Patch Cables
Conclusion
The client was previous paying a flat rate of $25 per line from one of the top 5 VoIP providers. The service worked alright but they were paying $3000 a month or $36,000 annually, with parts plus labor their new system came to about $70,000. They’re monthly sip trunking bill ranging from 100-200 a month at an average of $150 a month or $1800 annually. The first year it would be 71,800 minus the $36,000 they would normally pay comes to an additional $36,000 essentially. On the second year the $36,000 from the first year is wiped out by the $36,000 they would normally pay only leaving the $1800 for sip trunking and DIDs. Now on the third year we saw a savings of about $30,000 including the sip trunking, maintenance and software upgrades. These systems will last at least five years when properly maintained. The fourth year was about $28,000 saving due to increased maintenance costs. The fifth year were looking at $28,000 again with the maintenance, sip trunking DIDs, and software upgrades. Saving a total of $86,000 over five years. The system could go for another three-years if need be, however the maintenance cost would go up per year. Using virtual hardware would decrease this cost significantly but this model was done using physical hardware. With virtual hardware you would only have licensing costs for the PBX which tend to be less when installed on virtual hardware. To summarize we were able to save this client $86,000 over a five-year period with their own in house VoIP telephone system using sip trunking instead of a fixed monthly per line rate. Colocation, dedicated or hosted virtual servers would be another option for running the PBX software and depends a lot on how it will be used. If you have lots of smaller offices a hosted solution, that would make a lot more sense where as if everyone works from the same or one much larger office in house will make more sense.
Ultra Secure Email Solution
A privacy Solutions Company with 10 Employees
The client requested an ultra-secure email solution that can scale and only utilizes open-source software/hardware. It was decided no public cloud service provider could be utilized for security concerns. Zimbra, Ubuntu and Xen were all chosen because they are the best open-source options available. Zimbra was, and maybe still is utilized by yahoo for their mail system. The Xen hypervisor is used by the three largest public cloud providers in the world; Amazon, Rackspace and Softlayer. Ubuntu is an excellent open source Linux distribution. The mail system required the user to first connect to a web VPN provided by the Fortigate. The Fortigate utilized a two factor authentication smart phone app or key fob. LDAP was used to synchronize the users VPN and email system password. Once logged in to the VPN, the web mail portal would automatically open. Which no encrypts all data in transit also, not exposing the server directly to the internet. The incoming and outgoing email was scanned for viruses and spam by the Barracuda filter. Access to the servers and networking equipment was limited to a management VLAN and special admin VPN access w/ two-factor authentication.
•Zimbra Collaboration Suite
•Ubuntu Server OS 14.04
•Xen Hypervisor
•Dual Xeon CPUs, 64GB Hynix DDR4 ECC RAM
•8x 1tb SAS2 HDDs in a RAID 10
•LSI Controller w/ Cache Vault
•4x Intel 1g Ethernet NICs
•Out of Band Management IPMI
•1x VM LDAP
•1x VM Store
•1x VM MTA
•2x Quanta 1gbit 48 Port w/ 10gbit Uplinks Switches
•Barracuda Spam and Virus Filtering Appliance
•Fortigate 200d UTM w/ Two Factor Authentication (2FA)
Conclusion
With this setup our client was able to offer an incredible secure email system with several layers of defense. We used all open source such as Linux Ubuntu servers locked down to only allow what was required for the email systems. Everything was protected by a fortigate UTM with a secret address that then allowed for a two-factor authenticated virtual private network. Once connected they could access the email leaving no access from the outside without connecting to the VPN first. Spam and virus filtering was taken care of by a barracuda device.
Multi-tenant Exchange Cluster Solution
A Local IT Services Provider with 30 Employees
A fully redundant solution for providing cloud based exchange mail boxes to clients was required. The system was designed to handle 1000 mailboxes at full capacity and be easily scaled. Dedicated servers were chosen for the database availability group (DAG) for performance. A pair of ESXi hosts were used for redundancy and load balancing. The hosts contained one of each of the four other servers CAS, HUB, AD/DNS and Witness. This gave us the ability to take down a host for maintenance without compromising up time. F5 LTM load balancers were selected and placed in a high availability (HA) cluster. A pair of preexisting WatchGuard UTMs configured in a HA cluster were used for security and filtering spam and virus. Switching was handled by a pair of Cisco nexus switches. Doubletake was used for backups and server images.
Exchange Server Multi-tenant Deployment:
•3x Mailbox Servers in the Database Availability Group (DAG)
•Dual Xeon CPUs, 64GB Hynix DDR4 ECC RAM
•8x 2TB WD SAS2 HDDs in a RAID 10
•Intel Optane PCIe SSD 512GB (Caching)
•LSI Controller w/ Cache Vault
•2x Intel 10g Ethernet NICs
•Out of Band Management IPMI
•Microsoft Windows 2012r2 Server OS
•2x VMware ESXi Hosts
•Dual Xeon CPUs, 64GB Hynix DDR4 ECC RAM
•8x 1TB WD SAS2 HDDs in a RAID 10
•LSI Controller w/ Cache Vault
•Intel Optane PCIe SSD 512GB (Caching)2x Intel 10g Ethernet NICs
•Out of Band Management IPMI
•x VM Client Access Servers (CAS)
•2x VM Hub Transport Servers
•2x VM Active Directory/DNS
•2x VM Witness Servers
•Microsoft Windows 2012r2 Server OS
Network:
•2x f5 LTM 5000 Series Load Balancers
•2x 10gbit Cisco Nexus 5000 Series 48 Port Switches
•2x WatchGuard XTM 530 UTM
•24x 10g Twinax Generic Transceivers
•1gbit Commit 95th percentile Lakeside Internet over 10g Redundant Uplinks Full Rack Colocation, 20a 208v A/B
Conclusion:
This client was able to offer hosted exchange email service to their clients. The system was set up to never go down and support over a thousand mailboxes but upgradeable to an almost unlimited size. Spam filtering was taken care of and all of this from colocation at our tier 4 carrier hotel 350 east Cermak. Offering unprecedented service and access to our premium BGP route optimized bandwidth.