IT application question

[MattyB_]

Need help with clarification on an application for an IT position, if anyone can shed any light? The question is:

"Describe your experience of defining hardware and software requirements within a network environment"

The key word is in bold. Take that out, and I'm fine with the question, but I'm not sure if it's just poor prose, or I'm not understanding what they're asking. How do I define hardware in a network?

Note the follow up questions asks me about experience with Server OS, Windows and various network technologies - which does give me the impression that the question above is more than that.

Nothing more demoralising than getting stumped on the first question

[rsbmw]

Defining would be about system design, so for example you want a server to host roles X and Y, these require a combined 24gb of memory and dual core 2.0ghz CPU, 100GB disk space etc leading to a selection of a specific piece of hardware (or VM).

Similarly for software, you want to provide email services, you need the requisite software.

Speccing an MS Exchange server would be a good example for both.

[miniman]

They're asking how you would go about figuring out what hardware and software would be required for a network design.

[anonymous-user]

They are asking if you can think of a situation where you had to specify/recommend the hardware and software combination for a specific purpose. Hardware is of course network infrastructure, compute, storage etc while the software is what runs on it.

[Flooble]

What's the position?

"Define" could mean many things depending the level.

As a CTO you might "define" by just saying "we should have 24x7 availability blah blah blah"';
At an architect level that might be "We will need a hot standby datacentre with at least transaction log shipping";
At a desiger level it might be "the systems will be mirored by using an SSMS job"
At the tech lead level you might write a spec for the given SSMS job
Finally ... you might be the poor guy who has to make it work :-)