Diagram of my home network

I described my Office in a previous post.  In this post I thought I would provide a bit on insight into my home network.  The following diagram should give you the basic idea.

1. The hub of the network is a little 4 port 100MB switch.  All three servers and one laptop are plugged into this
2. There are two dedicated servers on the network
   1. Server 1 is a dedicated application server.  It only runs Windows 2003 Server and GSX Server 3.1.  All application servers and some test desktops run on top of GSX server.
   2. Server 2 is a dedicated management server, and Active Directory domain controller.  This server runs the MOM Express 2005, and acts as a backup of my main file server, using Windows 2003 Volume Shadow Copy.
3. My desktop PC also happens to run Windows 2003 server, as this allows me the flexibility to access it via Windows Terminal Services from anyhwere in the house, mirror my data files, and also runs as AD domain controller for resiliance.  It also runs VMWare Workstaton.
4. When I need access to my company network, I run up a corporate standard PC in a VM on my Desktop Server and VPN from there, (VMware allows me to share files between my Corporate network and my PC network, with full network isolation).
5. The Pinter/Scanner is plugged into the management Server and the Desktop application server, one connection via USB and the othere via parallel.
6. For flexible use around the house and offsite I also have a laptop which runs Windows XP Professional, but can access Linux from the VMWare application server.  The laptop and my PDA both connect via WIFI.
7. My eldest daughters both have PC’s.  One laptop and one desktop both connected via WIFI.
8. All machines are part of the home AD Domain and use roaming profiles.
9. All data access except from my desktop server is via DFS
10. All print access is via my desktop server
11. Windows Terminal services is used extensively by everyone in the family
12. My desktop has three screens all driven from my desktop server.  One display via analogue, one via DVI and one via a virtual display adaptor from Maxivista.
13. I have a KVM switch that allows my Keyboard, Mouse and Secondary display to be connected to either my desktop server or my application server for console access, although its more convenient most of the time just to leave a Windows Terminal Server session open.

In a future post I will explain a bit about my home lab, which is all virtual for maximum flexibility and runs a mix of Windows and Linix servers and clients.  I will also expand a bit on my desktop application environment and security.