Companies that have their infrastructure extended over a large number of offices pose their IT department with many challenges. How does the IT department support users in the different offices, how do they track problems and most of all how do they keep the operational costs under control? Compuware Europe has tried to address these problems by installing a standardized system in almost every office. This system handles the essential network services.

The standardized system is based on FreeBSD and is dubbed the Core Network Server (CNS). The CNS provides DNS, WINS, NTP and DHCP to the local office. This adds resilience against network failures. On top of that the CNS improves bandwidth utilization by providing local caching and serves local content that is kept in sync with a central repository.

Note: presentation will be in dutch.

Patrick Schoo is working as a Unix System Administrator for Compuware Europe. He is part of the team that is responsible for the network infrastructure in EMEA. In his role he works on operational issues, but also spends time on designing and implementing new IT infrastructure. Patrick has gained knowledge on Open Source Software during his employment in an academic environment, but has experienced that Open Source also works well in a commercial organization.