SQL Server 2012 Corporate Proposal

SQL Server 2012 Corporate Proposal Overview This proposal by Taylor & Associates will provide recommendations for the specific SQL server edition and provide a list of its capabilities and the minimum system requirements for it to run properly. It will also recommend a solution for data security throughout the company. A list of performance monitoring tools and a proposed back up plan in the event of a server outage will also be included. Proposal SQL Server 2012 has several different editions that a company can choose from based upon the needs of the company. Business Intelligence, Enterprise, Standard, Web and Express are the editions that a company is able to choose from. Each edition ranges from the Express with limited features to the Enterprise edition that is the most complete with all of the bells and whistles. The Enterprise Edition would be the option that will best suit the needs of ESL Inc. This option will meet the organizations needs for today plus still leave room for the business to expand in the future. The Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2012 enables a company to utilize the full amount of processing and memory functions when completing queries. Due to the limited capabilities of the Express Edition, it severely limits the amount of power from the server that can be used for queries and databases. The Enterprise Edition allows for Fast Recovery, Backup Compression, Database Mirroring, AlwaysOn Failover Cluster options, and Database Snapshot to name a few of the features. These features will help to make the System Administrator’s job a little bit more easier to when it comes to managing the database. (Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2012, n.d.). When it comes to Scalability and Performance, the Enterprise Edition can handle up to fifty multiple instances. It also handles data compression, multiple filestream containers, table and index partitioning, resource governing, and partition table parallelism. Compared to all of the other editions, it has the most security features which include fine grained auditing, transparent database encryption, and user-defined roles to name a few. For replication options, it includes SQL Server change tracking, snapshot replication, Oracle publishing, and transaction replication (Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2012, n.d). The Business Intelligence Edition of SQL Server 2012 shares a lot of the same features as the Enterprise Edition but the Enterprise Edition includes extra items that will ultimately make the System Administrators job of managing the server a lot easier. In order to successfully install SQL Server 2012 Enterprise x64 edition, the system needs to meet the minimum hardware requirements. The system will need to have 1 GB of memory and a 1.4 GHz processor at minimum. The 32 bit version does not have all of the features or speed of the 64 bit edition which is why the 64 bit version is being recommended instead of the 32 bit version. A minimum of 6 GB needs to be available on the hard drive in order to install the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2012. One of the many features only available on the 64-bit Enterprise Edition is the ability to hot swap memory and CPUs without having to shut down the entire server to do this. It is essential that security protocols are in place for SQL databases. If security is not configured at a high enough level, hackers and unauthorized users could have access to sensitive information contained within the database. As a preventative measure, it is recommended that ESL Inc should have the servers stored in a room that is only accessible to certain individuals with a special coded key card. As an additional security measure, backup servers should be stored at a different off site location. In the event that there is severe damage to the main servers, ESL Inc can access the backup servers to restore the operation and continue working as normal. The System Administrators will need to make sure that all updates are installed as soon as they come out and kept up to date on a regular basis. Along with a good firewall, this will prevent unauthorized users from accessing any data on the network or in the database. Utilizing certificate based security for Server Authentication will allow a secure server-client connection. These connections will make sure that the computer connecting to the server is authorize even it utilizing a connection outside of the local area network. An IPSec policy will be implemented to make sure that connections to the server over the Local Area Network are secure (Akkawi, F., Akkawi, K., & Schofield). There are two server authentication modes: Windows Authentication Mode and Mixed Authentication Mode. Windows Authentication mode is a popular method used to log in to the server. It uses the user’s Windows log in to provide them access. The System Administrator makes sure that each user has a certain Group Policy Object applied to their credentials. Windows Authentication Mixed mode uses a combination of the user’s Windows log in and a separate SQL Server log in to access the SQL database. When a user may be required to remember logins, they may have the tendency to write this information down and leave it in an unsecure place. This creates an opportunity for an unauthorized user to gain access to the database utilizing another user’s login information. It is recommended that ELS. Inc. utilize Windows Authentication Mode as the only way to grant access to the database. Database Administrators have the ability to provide access to the database utilizing certain roles and permissions in the system. A role can be created in the system that grants users certain levels of access. The users will only be able to access certain areas within the database and complete certain tasks based on how the Database Administrator configured the permission levels of the role. The ability to create roles that grant certain levels of permission allows the Database Administrators to focus their attention on other areas within the database. To make sure that information contained within the database is secure, symmetric and asymmetric keys can be used to encode the data. Symmetric do not require as much processing power as asymmetric keys to encrypt database and an identical key can be used to encode and decode a message. Asymmetric keys can be considered more protected because a different key is used to encode and decode the data (Akkawi, F., Akkawi, K., & Schofield, G., 2014). Using asymmetric keys uses more system resources for processing however it is worth it to ensure that the information in the database does not fall into the wrong hands. Optimizations should be used to improve database, query, schema, and index performance. An indexed view of certain data sets can be used to increase performance.