Unit

Software, Platform &

Objectives:
Infrastructure Services 2
At the end of the unit, the student must have:
• learned about the physical infrastructure services in an organization that make
server management easier;
• discussed what communication services are available and what you need for an
organization; and
• demonstrated how to ran a local webserver and understood how a public
webserver works.

2.1 What are IT Infrastructure Services?

In the last module, we learn that systems administrators have lots of responsibilities like
maintaining infrastructure services. I.T. infrastructure services are what allowing organization to
function. These include; connecting to the internet, managing networks by setting up the
network hardware, connecting computers through an internal network, etc.
In this lesson, we’re going to learn about the common I.T. infrastructure services out
there and what you need to know to start integrating them into an organization. We’ll also dig
deeper into each infrastructure service individually. We will focus more on the physical
infrastructure services like servers, along with network infrastructure service that keep your
company connected to the internet. In short, we’ll be servicing all infrastructure service needs.
We are also going to discuss the other services that make up an IT infrastructure. The
software and platform services.
Software services are the services that employees use that allow them to do their daily
job functions. This can include applications like word processors, internet browsers, email
clients, chat clients and so on. Platform services provide a platform for developers to code,
build and manage software applications. This way, developers don’t have to deal with
operating system maintenance and other services that are needed to use for platform tools.
When managing It infrastructure, it’s important that you implement software services for
your users to enable their productivity. Depending on what type of company you might manage,
you may also need to manage platform services for software developers.

2.2 The Role of IT Infrastructure Services in SysAdmin

There are lots of IT infrastructure services that keep a company running. In a smaller
company, a single person could be responsible for all these services. In larger companies,
teams assist admins might manage just one service. In this course, we're going to discuss what
you need to set up these services as the sole IT person in the company.
We'll also give you an overview of some of the cloud services that you can utilize if you
wanted another company to run your services. Reminder, as we mentioned before, cloud
services are services that are accessed through the internet like, Gmail. We can access our
Gmail accounts from any computing device, as long as we're connected to the Internet. By the
end of this module, you should be well versed in what services you'll need to have a
functioning IT infrastructure for your company.

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 2.2.1 Types of IT Infrastructure Services
There are lots of types of IT infrastructure services out there. We'll start by giving you a high
level overview of them in this lesson, then we'll dive into the nitty gritty details on how you configure
and maintain these services and later lessons. Sounds good? Let's get started.
We talked about physical infrastructure components of an IT environment in an earlier
lesson. Remember that you can set up different servers to run your services on, like a server to run
your file storage service. You can buy or rent hardware for these servers and set up and store
them either on-site, or at another location. Essentially, you manage these servers end-to-end.
There's another option. If you don't want to be responsible for managing the hardware tasks and
updating your server operating systems security patches and updates, you can use the Cloud
alternative to maintain your own infrastructure, which is called Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS.
IaaS providers give you pre-configured virtual machines that you can use just as if you had
a physical server. Some popular IaaS providers are, Amazon Web Services and their Elastic
Compute Cloud or EC2 instances, Linode, which runs out virtual servers, Windows Azure, and
Google Compute Engine.
Your company's internal network, isn't going to be like your network at home. You're going to
have multiple computers that need to be on a certain subnet. You have to assign them IP
addresses statically or using DHCP. The networking hardware has to be set up, wireless internet
will probably need to be available, DNS needs to be working et cetera. If your company is large,
networking is usually taken care of by a dedicated team. But in smaller companies, you'll probably
be responsible for setting up the network. Network can be integrated in an IaaS provider, but in
recent years, it's also been branched off into its own Cloud service, Networking as a Service or
NaaS.
NaaS allows companies to offshore their networking services so that they don't have to deal
with the expensive networking hardware. Companies also won't have to set up their own network
security, manage their own routing, set up a WAN and private internets, and so on.
Let's talk about the software that your company might want to use. Do you need to type out
word documents, use an email client, communicate with other people, use operating systems,
process spreadsheets or have any of other software needed to run a business? I bet yes. The right
software has to be available to your company's users. You have to deal with things like licenses,
security, updates, and maintenance for each machine.
The Cloud alternative to maintaining your own software is known as Software as a Service,
or SaaS. Instead of installing a word processor on every machine, you can use Microsoft Office 365
or Google G suite. These are both services that you can purchase that allow you to edit word
documents, process spreadsheets, make presentations and more, all from a web browser.
Some companies have a product built around a software application. In this case, there is
some things that software developers need to be able to code, build and shape their software.
First, specific applications have to be installed for their programming development environment.
Then, depending on the product, they might need a database to store information. Finally, if they're
serving web content like a website, they'll need to publish their product on the internet. If you're
building this entire pipeline yourself, you may need to set up a database and a web server. The
programming development environment will also have to be installed on every machine that needs
it. If you want an all-in-one solution to building and deploying a web application, you can use
something called Platform as a Service, or PaaS. This includes an entire platform that allows you to
build code, store information in a database, and serve your application from a single platform.
Popular options for PaaS are, Heroku, Windows Azure, and Google App Engine.
The last IT infrastructure service we'll discuss is the management of users, access and
authorization. A directory service, centralizes your organizations users and computers in one location
so that you can add, update, and remove users and computers. Some popular directory services
that you can set up are Windows Active Directory, OpenLDAP, and we'll dive a little deeper into
both of these later on in this course.
Directory services can also be deployed in the Cloud using Directory as a Service, or DaaS
providers. This is a general overview of the most common IT infrastructure services you'll encounter
when handling system administration tasks. While Cloud Services are a great option, it's super
important that you understand how a service works and how to maintain before you employ the
help of a Cloud Service. Even though Cloud Service are widely used in the industry, and have a lot
of pros, there are also some cons. These include recurring cost, and the need to depend on the
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providers service. We're going to teach you about the technical details and the implementation of
these common IT infrastructure services. We'll cover everything from setting up your own server, and
figuring out which applications you need to be productive, to how to set up the IT infrastructure, for
a small organization.

2.3 Configuring Communication Services

Software services include a wide range of functions. We'll cover the major ones here. First up is
communication services, which enable employees in a company to talk to one another.
Then, the security services, which add a layer of security protection to our IT infrastructure.
We'll also discuss user productivity services and some of the aspects of managing software in a
business that you'll probably have to think about in your work. There's lots of software out there
that's used for inter-company communication, like email or phone communication. These are
important communication services, but in lesson we're only going to discuss software that's
used in instant communication.
Instant communication has drastically changed how we communicate in both our personal
lives and in the workplace. We can have multiple conversations with different people in real time
using chat applications. You probably use something like Facebook Messenger on your smartphones
to chat with your friends. In a business setting, there are similar methods of instant communication.
The first is Internet Channel Relay or IRC, which is a protocol that's used for chat messages.
IRC operates in a client and server model, so lots of IRC client software can be used to connect to
an IRC server. IRC was widely used in the 1990s as a way to facilitate all kinds of chats, group
chats, individual chats, and more. It's not as widely used today, given the wave of social
media instant chat messages. But if you're considering setting up an IRC, it is a free alternative
to other chat applications. Paid for options are another method of instant communication. There are
a lot more sophisticated and advanced chat applications out there that offer Enterprise support. A
few popular options are HipChat and Slack.
You can read more about these in the supplemental reading. There are also other
communication protocols called open IM protocols that are widely used and integrated into
different communication applications. One of the most popular communication protocols is XMPP or
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. It's an open source protocol used in instant
messaging applications and social networking services.
XMPP is even used in Internet of Things applications, among other things. A few popular
and free applications that use XMPP are Pidgin and Padium. Feel free to check out more about
these alternatives in the internet.
Instant communications is a fantastic tool you can use to promote team collaboration and
efficiency. When managing an IT infrastructure, it should be one of the communication services that
you consider implementing for your organization. They'll definitely thank you, maybe even over
instant communication.

2.4 Configuring Email Services

One communication service that you're almost guaranteed to use today is email. We use email
for a wide range of communication. In an enterprise setting, it's important for a sysadmin, or a sole
IT support specialist, to be able to configure email services for the company.
To do this, you need to have a domain name set up for your company that you can use as
your email domain, like [email protected]. When you send or receive email, you want to use
this email address. There are two ways to set up email for a company.
The first is to run your own managed server. Using this option, you set up the email
service software on a server, then you create a DNS record for your mail server. There are different
DNS records. Remember that the A record is used for hostnames, but for email servers we use MX,
for the mail exchange record.
Email server setup can be one of the most complicated service to setup for a sysadmin. You
have to get the email to actually work, protect your email addresses from spam, filter out viruses
and more. If you'd like to learn more about setting up an email server, check out the next reading.
An alternative approach to setting up your own email service is to use an email service provider,
like Google Suite. These service providers allow you to create email inboxes and more by paying a
monthly fee for every user in your organization. This ties you into the Gmail webmail client, and
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allows you to access your email from anywhere, as long as you're connected to the Internet.
Whatever option you choose, you'll have to understand the differences between email protocols
when you setup your email accounts.
There are lots of email protocols out there, but we'll only do a rundown of the more common
ones you'll hear about, POP3, IMAP, and SMTP. Post Office Protocol, or POP version 3, is an email
protocol that downloads email from an email server onto your local device. It then deletes the email
from the email server. If you want to retrieve your email through POP3, you can only view it from
one device. There are a few reasons why you might want to use POP3 to get your email. If you
need to keep your email storage under a certain quota, POP3 is a good way to maintain that
storage limitation. Another benefit of POP3 is privacy. Your email can only be seen from your local
device. If storage limitations and security are a concern for you, you might want to consider
using POP3 over something like IMAP.
Speaking of IMAP, or internet message access protocol, allows you to download emails from
your email server onto multiple devices. It keeps your messages
on the email server. This email protocol is one of the more popular ways to retrieve email. Last up
is simple mail transfer protocol, or SMTP, which is a protocol used for sending emails. While POP3
and IMAP and other protocols can be used to retrieve email, there's only really one email protocol
for sending email, SMTP.
So there are lots of different email protocols that can be implemented, depending on the
email software of you choose. You can read more about them in the supplemental reading. Email
service is critical for any organization. Companies needs to be able to contact clients and business
partners and communicate internally. If you work in an IT support specialist role, where you're
handling system administration tasks, you will need to weigh the pros and cons of a dedicated
email server or a cloud email service, decisions, decisions, decisions.

2.5 Configuring User Productivity Services

In any organization the software that employees need to do their job is the software that an IT
support specialist managing IT infrastructure needs to provide. Depending on the organization, you
might need to get your users things like software development programs, word processing, graphical
editors, finance software, and so on. Whatever software you provide, there are different things to
consider when using it in a commercial setting that might not have crossed your mind when you've
used a similar software personally.
When you use software, you're doing so under the agreement of the developer's license. For
example, when you use open source software, the license agreement usually says that it's free to
use, share, and modify. When software is used as a consumer, agreements can say that only a
specific person can use the software. In a business or commercial setting, most software distributors
will have a separate agreement. In most cases, you can buy ten licenses, and any ten people in
your company can use it. If someone leaves the company or doesn't need the software anymore,
you can take their license andgive it to someone else in the company. When considering software
licenses, it's important to review the terms and agreement, then move forward with whatever option
works best for your company.
Things get a little more complicated when it comes to cloud software services. You might
have to deal with some of the same stipulations and also think through whether to purchase added
features for businesses and enterprises, like dedicated customer support.
Whatever method you use to provide software, whether it's installing software on every
machine or utilizing cloud software services, there's one thing to keep in mind. Software used as a
consumer won't be
the same as software used as a business.

2.6 Configuring Security Services

The last software services that we'll discuss are security services. Security is super important
to all organizations. It's integrated into pretty much all aspects of an IT infrastructure service. We'll
dive deeper into this in the last course on IT security. For now, remember that there are lots of
different security protocols that are put in place for all sorts of things, keeping data encrypted,
authentication, etc. If you ever manage a web server that serves content to other users, you want

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to let them know that when they access your website, you're keeping their interaction with you as
secure as possible. Let's say that you have an online bank account that you're logging into.
The URL will most likely begin with an HTTPS. Remember that HTTP stands for HyperText
Transfer Protocol, which is used to format and transfer web content around the Internet. When you
enter in a URL, you notice that HTTP comes before everything else. HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer
Protocol Secure is a secure version of HTTP. It makes sure the communication your web browser
has with the website is secured through encryption. HTTPS is also referred to as HTTP over TLS or
HTTP over SSL. This is because there are two protocols that enables us to make our web servers
secure.
The first is Transport Layer Security protocol, or TLS, which is the most popular way to keep
communications secure over a network. TLS is widely used to keep web browsing secure, but it can
be used in a lot of other applications, too. We'll do a deep dive into the technical
details of TLS in a later course.
The second protocol is Secure Socket Layer protocol, or SSL. It's a way of securing
communication between a web server and client. But it's pretty old and insecure, so it's been
deprecated in favor of TLS. You may still see it today being used over the TLS protocol like
SSL/TLS. The two protocols are often used interchangeably. In fact, SSL version 3.0,
was essentially TLS version 1.0. But TLS's new features and updates have made it more secure
than SSL. So if you're managing an organization's website on a server, how do you enable TLS on
the server so that the site can be using HTTPS?
Well, you need to get a digital certificate of trust from an entity called a certificate authority.
The certificate authority grants a certificate to your website saying that it trusts that you control the
web server. And verifies that you are who you say you are. Once it does that, you can install
the certificate on your web server. That way, when users visit your site, they'll see the HTTPS in
the URL instead of just HTTP. For now, think of certificates as a way to verify that something is
trustworthy.
Security is an integral part of IT, and it's not just the responsibility of security engineers.
Everyone should be thinking about security. And all layers of your infrastructure should have a layer
of security built upon them. There are lots of other security software that you can add to your IT
infrastructure, which we'll dive into in the last course. For now, it's a good idea to know the basics
of keeping a web server secure with HTTPS.

2.7 What are File services?

In this lesson, we're going to run down some of the file services we can use that will allow us
to be productive as an organization. Employees need to be able to share files with each other,
whether that's to collaborate or exchange information. We are going to talk about more scalable
and efficient ways to share data, enter file storage services.
File storage services allow us to centrally store files and manage access between files and
groups. You can set up a file storage server that will let users access a shared directory to modify
or add files and much, much more. We'll go into depth on two of the more popular ways you can
use to manage, store, and share files over a network. The other way to maintain a file storage
service is by using a Cloud file storage provider. There are lots of providers that offer secure and
easily managed file storage. You can read about some of the more popular ones in the
supplemental reading. For now, let's see how to manage a file storage service ourselves.

2.8 Network File Storage

FAT32 is a popular FAT system that's compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OSes. But it
has severe limitations on the amount of data you can store on a volume. What happens if you have
multiple users that want to share files between each other? Well, they need to store the files
somewhere and they need to be able to retrieve the files over a network.
Network file system, or NFS, allows us to do this. It's a protocol that enables files to be shared
over a network. The FAT system is compatible on all major operating systems. The easiest way to
setup an NFS server is by using a Linux environment. You can install NFS server software that
modify the configuration files for the directories that you want to allow shared access to. Once you
do that, the NFS service will be running in the background of the server. On each client machine
that wants to access a server, you just mount the file system the way you would any other file
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system. Except, you'd use the host name instead of a physical disk device. From there, you can
access the shared directory like you would any other folder in a computer.
NFS is a good solution to file sharing within the network, but as with anything on a network
heavy usage will slow down the file system. While NFS works with all major operating systems there
are still interoperability issues with Windows. If your fleet consists mostly Windows machines you
might want to look at using something like Samba. Samba services are similar to NFS since she
can centrally share and manage files services. Also, all major operating systems can use a Samba
file sharing. The only reason you might want to consider Samba over NFS, is because it works
better with Windows operating systems. It also includes other services that can be integrated with
your organization like printer services, we'll talk about printer services in an upcoming lesson. One
thing to note is that, you may hear the term Samba or SMB. These two are different.
SMB is a protocol that Samba implements. Fun fact, when you create a Windows shared folder
it's actually using the SMB protocol, Samba itself is a software service suite used for file services.
There are lots of other file storage services that you can use and you can read more about
them in, wait for it, the supplemental readings. A relatively affordable solution for FAT storage
hardware is to use a network attached storage or NAS, pronounced NAS. Instead of setting up a
dedicated server like you would other services. NASes are computers that are optimized for file
storage. They usually come with an operating system best stripped down in order just to serve files
over a network. They also come with lots of storage space. Whatever method you choose, central
file storage and management is an important part of I.T. infrastructure for any organization.

2.9 Mobile Synchronization

The great thing about mobile devices is that you can take them almost anywhere, but the risk is
that they contain all kinds of information that will be hard to replace. Let's admit it, mobile devices
can sometimes be pretty easy to lose. Think about all that data, personal information like emails,
photos, videos, calendars, health data, location data, your rank in Mobile legends if it isn’t bound.
So, in this lesson we are going to check out some ways that you can protect your valuable data
even if your mobile device is damaged lost or stolen. So how did we do this? For each type of
important data on your mobile device, you want to make sure that the data is synchronized or
synced with another location. When you synchronize data, you make sure that the data is the same
in two or more places.
How does this work? Well if a calendar appointment is only stored on your device, then you
need your device with you to view the appointment, plus if you lose access to the device, you lose
all the appointment details, now you have no idea what time are supposed to be meeting your
friends for coffee. But if you use a calendar that syncs your data, you are all good. A calendar that
signed into an online account will sync any schedule changes or new appointments to a central
location in the Cloud.
If you sign into the calendar on another device but using the same account, you will see the
same set of appointments. As an IT support specialist, it's important that you understand what data
and which apps are critical to your organization and also what's critical to the end users that you
support. Most organizations will care about business data like email, calendars, and contact
information.
You might also have app that manage documents, photos, videos and so on. Your challenge
is to make sure that if the device is lost, you can still recover the data. The best way to do this
in which you might be responsible for in your IT support role, is to make sure business-critical data
is synced in at least two places.
Lucky for us many mobile apps automatically sync, in some cases mobile apps already used
the Cloud as their canonical data source. For example, if you sign into an account for your email
and calendar apps, they will probably get all of their data from servers in the Cloud, or your
organization's local IT infrastructure.
If you lose your phone, you could just sign into the same account on a different device and
get the exact same data. With an app like this, you won't lose any data if the device is damaged,
lost or stolen. It's pretty cool, right? Some apps can be configured to every so often automatically
sync or back up data to a Cloud storage service. This means that you might lose some data if you
lose access to a mobile device, but the loss will be limited to the time since the last backup. Other
apps might store their data only on the local device and not be able to back up their data to the

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Cloud, in that case you want to synchronize your data to another location in case something
happens to your device.
Maybe you remember from an earlier discussion how each app on your mobile device has a
specific location where it's allowed to store data. Well IOS and Android both supports backing up
this app data to the Cloud. Not only will these mobile OSs backup app data but also your devices'
accounts and settings, too. Want to know more about how to set up device backup to the Cloud?
Then check it out on google. :)

2.10 Configuring Print Services

While our world is moving more and more into the digital space, there are still aspects of our
lives that require good old-fashioned paper. Many organizations still use printers, and as an IT
support specialist, you have to manage them as you would any other device.
If you have a printer at home, you probably connect it directly to your computer. Maybe you
even print over your home network through Wi-Fi. Some small organizations can get away with this
type of printer management, but most large organizations have lots of printers that need to be
managed and large volumes of information that need to be printed.
When managing printer IT infrastructure, you need to have a place to centrally manage all your
printers. You'll probably be running commercial printers that also can report diagnostics information
like low toner levels. Along with managing print essentially, you'll also need to be able to deploy
printer driver software so that your users can print from their computers.
There are a few different ways that printers can be managed. Setting them up really depends
of how many printers you have and how many people are in your company. In a small company
with less than a hundred people, setting up one or two commercial printers should be more than
enough. To set up a print server, all you have to do is install a print service on a server.
Most of operating systems already come with a printer service readily available. For example,
let's look at Windows. In the Windows server operating system, there's a Print and Document
Services that can be enabled. All you have to do is add your network printer to the service and
install the drivers for those printers, nice and simple, right?
In Linux, a common print server that's usually pre-installed on machines is CUPS or Common
UNIX Printing System. CUPS allow you to easily manage printers from a simple web URL. When
your print service set up, you need to add the printer to the client machine. Just search for printer
server name, and connect to the device and start printing. There are lots of ways you can optimize
this process. When you start learning about directory services, we'll take you through how to set
rules up on machines so that the printer and their drivers are automatically installed on a client
computer.
Another way you can manage printers is by using the cloud service provider. This allows you to
manage your printers through a web browser. It also lets your users print through a web browser
so no setup is involved on their machines. Printer setup is pretty easy to do. Most of it depends on
what printer service you decide to go with. We've learned a lot about software services in our IT
infrastructure, from importing communication services to security and now printing. Let's keep
charging ahead. In the next lesson, we're going to discuss platform services.

2.11 What is a Platform Service?

Platform services provide a platform for developers to completely build and deploy software
applications, without having to deal with OS maintenance, server hardware, networking or other
services that are needed to use the platform tools.
A web server that we deploy our web applications to, or the development software that we use
to code our applications are both examples of platform services. In this day and age. Most
businesses have a digital presence. Whether that's a Web site that promotes their business, or even
a website that is their business. Businesses that run web services keep their services stored on a
web server. A web server stores and serves content to clients through the Internet. You can access
web service using a domain name like Google dot com.
A web server itself stores web files and runs an HTTP service or HTTP server, that processes
HTTP requests. Remember that HTTP is how the Web formats and transfer's web pages. You can
think of the web server as the physical server that stores with files and the HTTP server software.
When your web browser makes a request to fetch a web page from a URL, it sends an HTTP
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request that gets processed by the HTTP server. Then the HTTP server sends out and HTTP
response with the content that you requested.
There are a lot of popular HTTP server software out there. But the most widely used is the
Apache HTTP server, most commonly referred to as Apache. Apache is a free and open source. It
helps serve a large percentage of web pages on the Internet. Let's actually see how a web server
serves content to the Web. We're actually able to start hosting web content. Remember that our
computer has an IP address that's associated with itself 1 2 7 0 0 dot 1 or a hostname of localhost.
Localhost itself is reserved for this purpose. So, it's not possible to get the domain name localhost.
So, now that we know our machines location, lets enter it to the web browser. And here it is, our
local web server content running on our machine. The files we see here, come with the default
Apache installation. But if we want to upload our own web content, you can just navigate to the
directory where this is stored, and replace it with our web content. Remember, that since this
contemn is hosted on our local machine. We will need to use DNS to let the world know that our
web server exists.
That's a quick rundown of how web servers work. You can read more about Apache and other
HTTP servers on internet. System administrators are responsible for creating the content that gets
served. But they might be responsible for making sure that content is available. If you're an IT
support specialist with a web service that needs to be manage, you should have a pretty good
understanding of how it works.

When you are in service that operates on the web, you need to have a web server that serves
web pages that clients are requested, like we just covered. But you may also need to store
information. Have you ever thought about what happens to your information when you create an
account online for a website? Where do they store that info? Do they print a folder on a web
server? If they do, you need to stop using that service immediately.
Customer information, like news articles, videos, large amounts of text, image or audio files
generally get stored in a database. Databases allow us to store query, filter, and manage large
amounts of data. When you build a web product, you'll probably store the data in a database.
Database servers consist of database software that's running that you're able to read and write
from. Common database systems like MySQL and PostgreSQL are widely used in application and
web development and data analytics. These database systems usually require a knowledge of
special languages or syntaxes to be able to parse and filter through the large amounts of data.
Administrating and managing a database can be incredibly complex. Losing precious data could
cost the company dearly. There's actually an entire job specialization within IT that deals with
databases just like that called database administrators. We won't talk about their role in this
program, but if you're interested in learning more, you should know where to look.

2.12 Troubleshooting Platform Services

Web servers, and servers in general, are prone to breakage, just like any other machine.
Troubleshooting a web server can involve lots of different variables. We won't discuss a specific
troubleshooting scenario in this lesson, but we'll talk about some easy trouble shooting tools you can
use to diagnose a faulty web server or browser called HTTP status codes. When we want to go to
Google.com our browser is sending an HTTP request to the HTTP server on the web server. In turn
we get an HTTP response. Sometimes this response returns the content that we want. Almost all
the time it'll return a status message of the response.
HTTP status codes are codes or numbers that indicate some sort of error or info messages that
occurred when trying to access a web resource. Knowing common HTTP status code comes in
handy when you're troubleshooting website error. They usually tell you useful information that can
help you isolate the root cause. Here's a common HTTP status code you might recognized. The
dreaded 404 Not Found.
A 404 error indicates that the URL you entered doesn't point to anything. Let's see what
happens if I type in google.com/asdf. I get this error message. The requested URL /asdf was not
found on this server. That is exactly what I expected to happen. I typed in an address, I knew
didn't exist and the website confirmed it for me. But, how do we know it is a 404 error code?
Depending on the website HTTP error messages could be displayed right on the page when
you try to access it. However, to be absolutely sure you can just view the HTTP response itself. To
do that we'll have to do a bit of work. Browsers today have built in tools that help people diagnose
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issues with the web browser or website itself. Since I'm using Chrome, I'm going to use a Chrome
Developer Tools, let me go ahead and do that. So, I want to click on this, I get into tools. And then
click on Developer Tools. This will open up the Developer Tools side by side to my web browser.
Developer Tools is a great resource for testing and debugging issues with the website or browser.
We won't go through this tool, though. For now, we just want to see the HTTP response code. To
get to that, I'm going to go to the network type here and refresh my page. If I'm trying to go to
google.com/asdf, I'll see the request I made in the left hand side. If I clicked that, I'll see the status
codes says 404 not found, pretty me, right?
HTTP status codes that start with 4xx indicate an issue on the client-side. The client try to do
something that it couldn't, like enter a bad URL. Access something it was not authorized to do, etc.
The other common HTTP status codes that you might see start with 5xx. These errors indicate an
issue on the server-side. The web server that hosts this web content is experiencing issues and
hopefully their server administrators are looking into it. HTTP status codes tell us more than just
errors. They can also tell us when our request is successful, which is denoted by the codes that
begin with 2xx. HTTP status codes can tell us a lot about an issue with a website. If you encounter
one you aren't familiar with, just look it up. They will probably tell you exactly what the issue is. For
a list of HTTP status code, take a look at the supplemental reading.
Well, you have done it again, you have covered a lot of information in this module about
software and platform services. You learned about IT infrastructure services that help a business
stay productive, like communication services. You learned about security services that keep
information secure between web browsers and servers. You also learned about platform services
that are used to deliver applications to users. Now, you can put that knowledge to the test in a
short test we've cooked up for you. In the next module, we'll talk about managing users, computers,
and policies, using directory services. You're doing an awesome job, I know covered a lot but stick
with it you got this.

Key-Term Quiz

1. The Cloud alternative to maintaining your own software is known as ___________.

2. If you want to retrieve your email through ________, you can only view it from one device.
3. ___________________ is a protocol that's used for chat messages.
4. ___________________ is used to format and transfer web content around the Internet.
5. ___________________ provide a platform for developers to code, build and manage
software applications.
6. One of the most popular communication protocols is __________________________.
7. When you use ________________, the license agreement usually says that it's free to use,
share, and modify.
8. ________________ services allow us to centrally store files and manage access between
files and groups.
9. For each type of important data on your mobile device, you want to make sure that the
data is ______________ with another location.
10. __________________ consist of database software that's running that you're able to read
and write from.

Multiple Choice Quiz

1. What are some communication services you can utilize in your organization? Choose all that
apply.
a. Email b. Chat Applications c. DNS d. Phones

2. What’s the difference between POP3 and IMAP? Choose all that apply.
a. POP3 can only download email to one local device.
b. IMAP can only download email to multiple devices.
c. POP3 is used for sending emails.
d. IMAP can download emails onto multiple devices.

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 3. True or False: Commercial-use and Personal-use software licenses are essentially the same
thing. ___________.

4. What are the differences between TLS and SSL? Choose all that apply.
a. TLS is the successor to SSL.
b. TLS is more secure than SSL
c. SSL is more secure than TLS
d. SSL is the successor to TLS

5. What are the benefits of setting up an NFS server? Choose all that apply.
a. Connecting to printers
b. Storing files on a network drive
c. Enabling files to be shared over a network
d. Serving web content

6. What methods could you use to set up printing in an organization? Choose all that apply.
a. Directly connecting a printer
b. Setting up a print server
c. Using a cloud service to set up printers
d. Setting up an NFS server

7. When you have a web server, what service is used to enable HTTP requests to be
processed?
a. An HTTP server b. The web server c. HTTP status codes d. A database server

8. You can use a(n)_____________ to store large amounts of customer data for a website.
a. NFS server
b. HTTP server
c. Database server
d. DNS server

9. HTTP status codes that begin with 4xx, like 404, indicate errors on:
a. The client-side
b. The server-side
c. Nowhere; these codes are successful
d. Redirections

10. HTTP status codes that begin 5xx, like 501, indicate errors on:
a. The client-side
b. The server-side
c. Nowhere; these codes are successful
d. Redirections

Laboratory 2.1 Managing a Database Project

A consulting project involved a credit card “bottom feeder” (let’s call it Credit Wonder). This
company bought credit card accounts that were written off as uncollectable debts by major banks.
Credit Wonder would buy the write-off accounts for 1 or 2 percent of their value and then would call
the owners of the written-off accounts and “offer a deal” to the credit card account holders.
Credit Wonder wanted a database for these accounts. Legally, it did own them and so could
contact the people who had owed the money—but as prescribed in credit law. For example, Credit
Wonder could call only during certain hours and no more than once a week, and they had to speak
to the actual account holder. Any amount collected over the 1 to 2 percent of the original debt
would be considered a gain. In its database, Credit Wonder wanted a history of what settlement
was offered, the date the account holder was contacted, and additional notes.

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QUESTIONS:
1. How might a systems analyst manage such a system project?
2. Who would the systems analyst need to interview to get the system requirements?
3. How would a database analyst help in structuring the database requirements?

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