Assignment task: Merlinos Mills is a company that produces flours and grains for grocery stores. It owns mills and distribution centers in the northwestern and midwestern United States. The headquarters in Bend, Oregon employs more than 400 people, most of whom use computers. Also, the headquarters has 28 servers, all running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. The company employees use a full range of OSs, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Mac OS X Mavericks.
The management of Merlinos Mills wants each department to upgrade to newer OSs. Also, they are very concerned about network security, and they want to install new servers and upgrade their current servers to OS versions that take better advantage of security features. Your role in the process is to work with each department to help ensure that the installations and upgrades go smoothly.
Case Project 1: Determine preliminary steps
The master distribution center in Bend, Oregon includes 42 people, including nine Windows Vista users, 22 people using Windows 7 Professional, and 11 people using Windows 8.1. The distribution center is slated to upgrade its computers to Windows 10 Pro.
a. What preliminary steps should be taken before starting the upgrades on these computers?
b. In general, are there any problems involved in upgrading to Windows 10 from each of these OSs?
Case Project 2: Decide to upgrade or not
The distribution center's nine Windows Vista users are all certain they need to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro to perform their work. However, the 33 people in the distribution center who are running Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 Professional are currently able to use all software, such as office software, customized distribution software, and inventory software that is integrated with the distribution software. They are resisting the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, and the distribution manager asks for your opinion about whether to upgrade these computers.
a. Should the distribution center upgrade from Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 to Windows 10?
Case Project 3: Install Windows 10 Pro
After considering the issues in Case Project 5-2, management has decided that the distribution center will replace the computers running Windows Vista and Windows 7, and purchase new machines with Windows 10 Pro. The Windows 8.1 users already have computers that can run Windows 10 for a possible upgrade. The user support person for the distribution center has not performed an installation for Windows 10.
a. Tell the user support person generally what she can expect when performing this installation.
Case Project 4: Move to Windows Server 2012 R2
The IT Department already has been testing Windows Server 2012 R2, and some time ago purchased licenses to convert all of its Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition servers to Windows Server 2012 R2 Enterprise Edition. Two of the servers are running the Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008. Two other servers are running the 32-bit edition of Windows Server 2008. Management wants all servers to run the Server with a GUI installation.
a. Explain the general process the IT department must follow to convert to Windows Server 2012 R2. Include any caveats or problems they might encounter.
Case Project 5: Upgrade to Mac OS X El Capitan
The Marketing Department strictly uses computers that run Mac OS X Mountain Lion and plans to upgrade to Mac OS X El Capitan.
a. What steps should the marketing department follow for the upgrade?