Expanding my lab - network question

From: Craig Earnshaw (Craig.Earnshawat_private)
Date: Thu Aug 16 2001 - 04:08:03 PDT

  • Next message: Mike Smith: "RE: Forensics Lab Equipment Questions"

    Dear All....
    
    We're taking a look at seriously expanding our forensic computing
    operation from our current situation (six stand alone workstations each
    with removable drive bays etc) to a much larger version.
    
    One of the options that I am considering is to build a network with ten
    workstations all connected to a dedicated server (Dell PowerEdge 2550 -
    1Gb RAM, 2x 1GHz, running NT) with a dedicated storage system (Dell
    Powervault 200S - c. 350Gb RAID 5, SCSI drives) on which to store all of
    the image files etc.  This option would therefore enable all data to be
    accessable from all workstations (which is currenlty causing huge
    problems when a couple of people are working on the same case with the
    same data), and to enable the use of things like Accessdata's
    distributed network attack password crackers (which harness the power of
    all machines on a network to crack pwd's far quicker).
    
    I would still keep a number of workstations as stand alone, for those
    tasks, such as imaging and restoration of backup tapes etc that don't go
    down too well in a networked environment.
    
    Does anyone have any thoughts on whether a setup like this would work,
    or would cause problems with the various forensic analysis packages (eg
    EnCase), or whether there are reasons why this setup is a bad idea
    generally?
    
    BTW - this isn't posted on the EnCase message board as we don't
    CURRENTLY used it, but we're thinking about it....
    
    Regards
    
    Craig G Earnshaw
    Forensic Computing Services
    
    
    
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