Rack Design & Network Design Documentation

Site Survey was fun isn't it? You get to come across new stuff, new places, remote locations, surprising features, old vintage stuff (yeah there are in the IT world, now you know) and felt mind-blown?

Well, it’s defintely a physical labour work, going to all of those sites as per the schedule in the sunshine and rain but it will benefit throughout the whole project till the end and it will be a long-lasting memory as well.

It will be your experience to share to the world in the future.

Alright, now that’s done, what’s next?

1. There’s two standardized documentations I am going to inform you that are mandatory which are:
   

2. Rack Design Documentation: You MUST ensure all the site survey of all the sites you visit have Rack Design Documentation created or updated for each one of them and is beautifully clearly detailed and designed and stored in an online storage and providing ‘View’ access to required personnel who needs to know.
   

3. Network Design Documentation: A design documentation which it will be Layer 2 (Data Link), Layer 3 (Network) & 4 (Transport) combined.

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The components/requirements of a Network Design Documentation

1. You will need a Diagramming & Flowchart Tools. Eg: Visio, LucidChart, Draw.io
   

2. You will need the following information to start of with:
   

   1. Segeration of locations: Eg: HQ, Office Branch, Remote Site, Cloud, ISP, Overseas Branch
      

   2. The devices/network that will be used for network communication: Eg: Switches, Routers, Firewalls, IDS/IPS, ISP Routers, WLC, WAP, WAN Network, VPN, IPSec, Site-to-Site, DMZ, Laptops, Mobile Devices, Internet,
      

   3. IP Address: Of all the devices, Subnet Range, Management IP & Management VLAN Number, Different VLANs Number & IPs, Next Gateway/Hop IP, WAN Router (ISP) IP
      

   4. The direction of network traffic flow (uni-directional/bi-directional) to and from: Eg: Active Directory, Exchange Server, Radius, Tacas, DHCP Server, DNS Server, Web/Windows/Linux Servers, Database, Storage, Proxy, Load Balancer, Application Gateway, FTP Server, SaaS, Cloud Services, Internet
      

   5. The Network Protocol: (ssh/rdp/https/syslog/ldap/NAT/udp/tcp/dns/dhcp/ftp/smtp/snmp/ssl)
      

   6. The Routing Protocol: (Static/RIP/OSPG/BGP)
      

   7. The Bandwidth information
      

   8. Network Connectivity Type: Eg: Trunk, Link Aggregation, SPAN port (mirror traffic)
      

   9. Any 3rd Party integrations: Eg: Cyberark (PAM), IAM, Splunk, Nessus, Azure/AWS/GCP, Network Detection and Response (NDR), Network Monitoring, SOAR, Threat Intelligence, ServiceNow, Jira, SaaS, Online Storage,
      

   10. If it’s hosted on Cloud, the VPC/EC2/VNET/Resource Group information to be indicated clearly.

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** I am writing this to you to the global team who is yet to begin a network design documentation. **

Introduce yourself through your designing skills of the Network Security Architecture

I LOVE designing. It’s a beautiful art you can create and articulate your flow of thoughts to the team for them to accquire deeper insight/awarness of the architecture and get them inspired by the design that needs to be brought to life and let everyone truly experience it everyday.

I have designed many network architecture designs where they came back to me for adjustments was less to zero times. This is how you must be as this is the core, fundamental, foundational, pillar & structure documentation of the organization. Every single tiny detail is to be properly captured, drawn and explained with a legend.

Because, the next development into the network design is to include security in every entry/path and to create a layered defense in-depth approach embracing the zero-trust architecture which is to ‘Never Trust, Always Verify’ which will be pretty hard. 

If you dont get the network design right, it’s going to be very tough with security and the need to re-design the network design is extremely high. 

I couldn’t/may not get in architect role, however I want to see many of you living my dream being that amazing wonderful Network Security Architect and create a solid, clear, precise, thorough, with a flow of events/thoughts/traffic & extremely well documented deisgn and bring it to life.