Chapter 8 web server hardware and software

Complete Case Problem C2. Random Walk Shoes, parts 2 (100 words min) & 3 (100 words min)

Exercise 3

Assume you are planning Web server computer capacity for a business that has 5000 business customers and sells about 1200 different products. Each customer buys between 10 and 50 items two or three times each month. The business had 300 employees, 200 of whom regularly interact with the company’s online sales system. As you learn more about disk storage options for the Web server, you learn that many companies selling Web servers offer a configuration option for controlling those computers’ disk drives called “RAID”. Using the Web and your library, investigate the purpose of RAID controllers. Learn what these controllers do and how they do it. Form an opinion regarding the suitability of these controllers in the Web server you are planning. Summarize your findings in a 200-word briefing report suitable for presentation to a nontechnical manager.

Case 2. Random Walk Shoes

Amy Lawrence, the owner of Random Walk Shoes, has asked you to help her as she launches her company’s first Web site. In college, Amy was a business major with an artistic bent. She helped to pay her way through college by decorating sneakers with her hand-painted designs. Her business grew through word of mouth and through her participation in crafts fairs. By the time she earned her degree, Amy was running a successful business from her dorm room.

Amy expanded her sales efforts to include crafts fairs in nearby towns. She hired two college students to work for her, and she convinced several area gift shops to stock samples of her merchandise. The gift shops were not an ideal retail outlet for her products, however. Most people who want to buy decorated sneakers want to choose specific designs or have special designs created just for them. Customers also want to choose the specific shoes on which the design is placed. One of Amy’s student workers suggested that she consider selling her products on the Web.

Realizing that the Web would give Random Walk Shoes a chance to reach a much wide audience and would allow customers to choose design–shoe combinations, Amy began gathering information and developing estimates about her planned Web activity. She bought a digital camera and took several hundred pictures of shoes, designs, and shoe–design combinations. She then hired a local Web designer to create sample pages for the Web site, including catalog pages that contained the digital images.

When the Web designer had completed a prototype of the site, Amy worked with the designer to calculate page sizes (including the images). The average page size was 100 KB. Amy and her employees then navigated the prototype site several hundred times to develop an estimate of how many pages an average visitor would download. They concluded that an average site visitor would visit 23 pages during each visit. Amy worked with the Web designer to develop estimates of the activity they expect to occur on the Web site during its first two years of operation. These estimates include:

• The database of Web page information (including the images) will require about 400 MB of disk space.

• The database management software itself will require about 200 MB of disk space.

• The shopping cart software will require about 200 MB of disk space.

• About 8000 customers will visit the site during the first month, and site traffic will grow about 20 percent each month during the first two years.

• The site should accommodate a peak traffic load of 3000 visitors at one time.

Amy wants to include features on the site that are similar to those found on competing sites (a list of links to businesses that sell customized shoes on the Web is included in the Online Companion for your reference). Amy wants the site to provide a good experience for visitors. If the site is successful, it will generate sufficient revenue to allow an upgrade after two years. However, she does not want to spend more money than is necessary to get the site up and keep it running for the next two years.

Required:

2. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each major operating system that Amy might use on the new Web server computer. In a one-page memorandum to Amy, make a specific recommendation and support it with facts and a logical argument. If you do not believe that one operating system is clearly superior for this application, explain why.

3. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each major Web server software package for accomplishing the goals that Amy has for this site. In a one-page memorandum to Amy, make a specific recommendation regarding which Web server software package she should use. Provide an explanation that supports your recommendation.