Assessment

Scenario & Task

A Small Business, EcoGoods, has recently acquired compute resources on-premises which they wish to begin deployment of their website, product database, and any related services. Your role as systems administrator for this company is to configure an Arch Linux system to meet the requirements of the company laid out below in ‘requirements’. This machine should not have an GUI installed on it at any point, any and all configuration tasks must be completed from a CLI.

For the purposes of this assessment, you should create a single Virtual Machine with a 40GB vDisk split into multiple files, for the purposes of installing Arch Linux. This will act as your Baremetal server. For the specifications of this machine, ensure that you configure the VM to have at least 2GB of Memory (otherwise installation may fail). For CPU, this can be left at default values.

Requirements

1.   Install the Arch Linux OS. In total you should have a 40GB Virtual Disk, as multiple files. Your system should have the following partition configuration:

1.   /boot – 512M

2.   /home – 14G

3.   / – 25.5G (remaining)

2.   Secure, with justification, the root user account

3.   Setup administrative users for yourself and the IT Manager (Ashley)

4.   Create User accounts where needed for the following persons:

1.   Avery Wolfgang Stephenson – Technical Lead Developer, should have complete access to any and all folders under /srv/

2.   Evelynn Hughes – Website developer who will need access to a folder (/srv/http) for the website files only. She will put files in there such as index.php, and any other website related files / folders. She will not require interacting via CLI.

3.   James Hunter – Software Tester responsible for verifying that developed work conforms to company standards and works appropriately.

5.   Set-up and correctly configure a SSH server for secure access, taking into account all user account requirements.

6.   Store, and secure access to, a development project data directory (under /srv/) for developers to have access to. Developers should have full access to the development folders; however, the Software testers should not be able to change code, only check the code for code-style and whether the program/scripts runs appropriately.

7.   Installation, configuration, and running of a docker containerisation environment. Only Technical Leads and System Administrators should have access to control Docker containers’ lifecycles. Note, Avery requires a database admin user.

1.   MySQL – Not externally accessible. Only by other containers.

2.   PhpMyAdmin – Accessible via Reverse Proxy on /phpmyadmin route.

3.   NGinx accessible on Port 80. The Website will be hosted on the main ‘/’ route. Files for this website should be placed in /srv/http on the host-machine. (Provided on Canvas)

Note: Your VM itself will NOT be inspected for awarding marks. Therefore, you should ensure that your documented progress sufficiently shows the steps taken. It is expected that when performing configuration steps, that these are done optimally and with consideration of security of the system. E.g Appropriate use of root and non-root administrative users.

Deliverable

A PDF report ( Approx 1500 words ) detailing the steps from the Virtual Machine creation, towards the goal of configuring to the above specification. You should provide clear and justified rationale for decisions made with reference back to the requirements provided.

You should include steps taken to verify that changes implemented are working as intended.

You may utilise additional software which is required to be installed via pacman; however, these must be justified and fit-for-purpose.

Cover page, table of contents page, appendices, and references sections do not count towards the word limit.

For evidentiary screenshots, it is recommended to place these as appendix items such as “Appendix Item A – Screenshots of VM Creation”. You would then reference these appropriately from within the main report text, e.g “A Virtual Machine was created (See Appendix Item A) …”

Submission Requirements

You are required to submit your paper as a single PDF file via the Canvas submission portal.

Help with Referencing

Whenever you need to refer the reader to the source of some information, e.g. a book/journal/academic paper/WWW address, provide a citation at that point within the main body of your report.

Example 1: … as we are all now aware referencing is not trivial (Kendal, 2017)

Provide a reference list towards the end of your research paper (after your conclusions section but before any appendices) that contains:

●       References, a list of books/journals/academic papers/URLs etc. that have been directly cited from within the report (see example citation above).

●       Any material from which text, diagrams or specific ideas have been used, even if this has been presented in your own words, must be cited within the main body of the paper and listed in the reference list. It is not enough to list this material in a bibliography.

Example 2: For Example 1, (using Harvard system) the reference list would contain the following:

Kendal S., 2017, Referencing standards, International Student Journal, Vol 55, Pages 25 – 30, Scotts Pub., ISBN 1-243567-89

This shows the authors, date published, title of paper (in single quotes), title of journal or conference (in italics), volume, page numbers, and publisher (ISBN desirable but not essential).

For further help see the following book which is available in the library:

●       Cite Them Right: The Essential Guide to Referencing and Plagiarism by Richard Pears and Graham Shields

An interactive online version of this guide is available by logging into My Sunderland with your User ID and password and then clicking on Me and Library Resources.