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Computer Room Design?
Onion asks: "My company is considering giving us a new Computer Room, and Command Center, as our existing building is nowhere near meeting current needs, let alone future needs. I have seen a few plans for command center furniture, but no real designs or ideas for the layout of these two rooms. We have five racks for the actual computer room, and need around 25 screens for the command console. Add to this bench space for repairs, and things like: a cupboard, bookshelf, plus more storage space, and the design becomes more complicated. We need enough space for three or four admins. Has anyone seen plans for this type of setup ?"
I think there is a rather nice classic example in Dante's Inferno, although that may have very well been a Microsoft Shop. Servers should be (ignoring hardware issues) administered via ssh from nice, comfortable office chairs down the hall. I would be more worried about cooling/venting/security issues than whether or not pc repair and servers can coexist in a small area... our setup is like that and its quite silly.
My advice is to build your own command center by studying those featured in the James Bond movies. Most of the bad guys have a fully staffed, very impressive command center filled with computers and cool looking wall-sized flat screens. Make sure you get the center chair that overlooks the whole setup. Not only will it be a joy to work at but a command center like that will impress even the most stingy of VCs or customers.
Always happy to help,
GMD
watch this
...say, a Beowolf Cluster?
Sorry, couldn't resist!
Use lots of milk crates and plywood sheets for the 'professionally harried' look.
I'm a little confused here. If you only have 5 racks of servers, why on earth do you need 25 consoles? 5 racsk can easily be controlled with one decent KVM, I prefer Blackbox myself. You also didn't say how much room you have. 25 consoles, even stacked 3 high take up a hell of a lotta room. Get a really good KVM, leave the people that need to be there in the noisy hel of a computer room, and then go back out to your desk and run everything from ssh or a Win2k terminal session. That's the way I do it.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Bear with me, I'm serious.
Arrange the main desks into a shallow semicircle, facing one wall. On the wall, you can have whiteboards, charts, an electronic status display, etc. -- general information stuff that the admins might want to look up and see. (Oh yeah... a clock would be good, too.) It sounds like you already have an idea for the workstations themselves.
For announcements, crisis control, and so forth, the team leader could stand with his back to that wall and comfortably address the entire team.
Then, around the perimeter of the room, have repair benches, shelves, cupboards, a fridge in the corner, whatever you feel.
Hmm... geeky, but that's just off the top of my head.
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It's the first postus with the mostus. w00t!
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "Command Center". Is that a room to oversee a network from? Or do you run physical machines (manufacturing plant, pump systems, etc)?
Oh no! This is not another one of those "how do I make my geeky enough" ask slashdots, is it?
BTW, this is a joke, mods should try it somtime
.....
There is a special kind of person who can answer your question, an "Architect". Perhaps your company should get their act together and pay a professional to do the job properly. After all the cost of an architect will be a fraction of the construction cost and will make the difference between a usable space and ... not.
Think of it in terms of design before implementation.
I think there is one all setup the way you want right here
Has anyone seen plans for this type of setup ?"
only in the house I designed with my wife.... I wonder why she left me?
.....
http://www.spacedesigntechnology.com/`
It all depends on what you want to spend.
We're extremely co-located here at my current job. In fact the closest server is two hours from me. (This is for security reasons) Anyway, we do it all with just a few terminals and a whole lot of VNC. I think the best answer for you is to set up a few simple boxen that exist to only run VNC sessions for guests and the like, and then hook up a tunnel encryption to the servers if you are worried about it. I can honestly say that Zebedee has been the easiest thing to set up. It runs over port 11965 if you want to push it out the firewalls as well.
KVM switches rock, but tie you to one location, and then you fight over the terminal with the other admins. When you can do it all from your desk with just a click, why not?
considering the increacingly general ask slashdot submissions, I wonder how long it'll take before we get,
'how do I set up my home so I can access the TV, computer, and fridge as quickly as possible?'
.
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Unless you want to get sued and fined by OSHA.
Noise levels, particularly high-pitched noise in computer rooms are way too high for human habitation. You will go deaf if subjected to for many years.
If people need to sit in the raised floor area, there needs to be a wood/glass wall between them and the computers and chillers.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Um, sure you can do it with VNC, or you can get a Matrix KVM switch (not a name brand) that is a many systems to many consoles layout. They even have IP-based consoles (software that will tie into the switch) for the 2-mile away ones. We have an older model here (non-IP) that works great. It all runs over a pair of cat5 cables for each point. 40+ servers, 5 consoles throughout the building for the various user groups, logins on the consoles integrated with the domain decide which servers you can choose from. Works great. Ours is by Avocent. --Matt
My company is considering giving us a new Computer Room, and Command Center, as our existing building is nowhere near meeting current needs, let alone future needs.
Why do you say that?
I have seen a few plans for command center furniture, but no real designs or ideas for the layout of these two rooms. We have five racks for the actual computer room, and need around 25 screens for the command console.
I don't understand.
Add to this bench space for repairs, and things like: a cupboard, bookshelf, plus more storage space, and the design becomes more complicated.
What makes you believe things might want to have this cupboard?
We need enough space for three or four admins.
Maybe your plans have something to do with this.
Has anyone seen plans for this type of setup?
Is it because of your life that you are going through all this?
Thanks!
Can you elaborate on that?
-- An Eliza Troll post: As insightful as the average Slashdot post, or your money back.
consists of my laptop running Slackware 8.1, Fluxbox, OpenSSH, and Galeon.
If you use automation properly, and technologies like ssh and VPN, etc., you don't -need- a 'command center', no matter the size of your organization.
Server rooms, network rooms/closets/PoPs, are absolutely necessary, and should be designed properly, w/racks/raised floor/UPS/etc. 'Command centers' aren't necessary at all, except for stroking one's ego.
That's not to say they aren't -cool-, but they're really passe.
you only need 1 flatpannel per rack, and one of those dohickies that switches between computers.
That solves 50% of your problem right there.
You really need to step back and consider what you want to do here.
Do you want a data center, ie computer server room, a noc, a workroom, etc?
If you have 4 admins, why do they need to see a massed array of consoles? Thats a job for Operations, not administrators. Put your administrators in cubes... Various cube designs out there.
Datacenter use open space and raised floor if possible.
Operations, couple of screens maybe 2 for each operator and use programs to pipe information to said operators, they shouldn't need a screen each. If your running MVS systems which "require" dedicated consoles... You can find cards and "hllapi" interfaces to run several console servers on one machine.
It doesn't sound like you actually have that big of needs.
Myself, I would just take over some custodial closet for the computers, beef up the ventilation and add in a ups system... Your going to need an electrical engineer to look over the power situation which should provide most of the space requirements for you.
As far as the admins go, find out what they want, usually 6x6 cubes with room for 2 computers is adequate...
As far as working on machines, find a room somewhere 20*40 or so that has a locking door. This way your's not concerned with parts walking out the door...
In truth, the computer room with be more of a engineering design, and set by your space requirements. The workspace for the admins is mainly set by getting input from management and admins.
What difficulties are you forseeing?
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
First,
- raised floor
- refrigerated air
- big electric circuits
then think about UPS units.And, just as you can never be too rich or too thin, you can never have too much storage space.
After that, move onto your network drops, benchspace, lighting, chairs, etc.
I'd advise having some locks on the doors, too, not only for the obvious security implications, but also so you have a place to hide when things go south (have a prepared placard to the effect of "We're actively working on the problem and will update you immediately as it's fixed.")
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I was the IS manager at a large architecture firm for years. Architects are a pain in the ass to work with, but a good architect is worth his weight in gold. Architects at their best are integrators and managers as well as designers.
Other posters have mentioned heat, alarms and fire supression levels as examples of things an architect might not understand. In my experience, most architects are pretty good about subbing out work they know they can't do. Architects don't draw plans for the whole project - they design the frame and facades, the interiors and the fixtures, but they usually leave other work for specialists. This means that your plumbing, electrical, etc will be handled by a consultant who does it for a living.
Your best bet is to find an architect with demonstrated experience in the kind of project you have in mind. Then ask for references and visit his(her/its) past projects. If possible, talk with the internal project manager at those sites (the person who dealt with the architect on a daily basis).
Nearly any architect can probably do your job, but it will be very painful with one who is inexperienced. Architects have a long and formal internship system - let your architect get his computer room experience as an intern on someone else's project, not as a lead on your project.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
One good suggestion is to let a pro design your new datacenter, or at least help you out. I've had some really good experiences with IBM Global Services - they worked with us on overall design, and we bought and installed the raised floor, cable management, cabling, UPSs, cooling units, etc... through them. Companies like that have a lot of experiential knowledge you can lean on, it takes a lot of practice to learn how to design a rock solid datacenter without overdesigning too much.
That aside - You say 5 racks and 25 monitors in a command center - sounds like one monitor in your command center for every machine you own or something. Consider using switches and keeping your command center down to 4 heads or so (or however many you think you need for simultaneous admin access). You can set up a network of kvm switches such that any of your 4 head units can reach any of your 25 machines easily. If they're *nix, skip the kvm stuff alltogether and just go serail console. Cyclades makes a nice linux-based serial terminal server with ssh support and whatnot.
11*43+456^2
I think there has been said here on how to set up a standard computer room. I might add one RC race car with a small tv camera to use to run cables under the raised floor.
For the command center I suggest notebooks 802.11b ssh and VNC. An Ipaq or the new Sharp PDA with some custom monitoring apps could also be handy. Why so many monitors.
You should consult an Interior Designer THe building is already built. As to others who say that you need someone knowledgeable about computer stuff, a competent designer will ask you about your requirements. It is an interactive process.
It's been said before, but, put your servers and routers and such in their own room. You don't need to be in there. They're machines that aren't supposed to need that much upkeep. Administrate them via SSH/VNC/whatever. They're also more secure in a dedicated room, and you can install a Halon system if the room isn't usually occupied by people.
.5 of one of the racks).
:-)
In that room, it helps to have a raised floor to #1, route cables under, #2, provide a place to put more ventilation conduits, and #3, keep the racks off the floor in case of flooding. You'll want this room to have it's own Air Conditioning [1] and filtered electrical power. Your utility company can bring in seperate "clean" power to that room, or you can just give the room it's own few breakers in the breaker box and filter the power with a UPS system, depending on your needs and size. As far as UPS systems go, most server rooms I've seen have banks of batteries for this purpose, which run the entire room on nice, clean, uninterruptable power. The company I work for even has a diesel generator on the roof with a 2 day supply of fuel, which is tested every month.
For the actual servers and routers, do the obvious: use racks. If your servers aren't already rackmounted, invest in rackmount PC cases - they're not too terribly expensive these days. You can fit quite a few 4U servers in one rack. My company generally has one KVM cluster for each 1.5 racks (keyboard/monitor/KVM taking up shelves on
It's not hard to build a good server room, and it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. It just takes some planning.
- Eric
[1] This doesn't just mean keeping the temperature down. Most server room A/C units also closely control humidity, as too much or too little humidity and you have bad, bad problems.
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Ph33r m3!!!
I'm not sure why 25 screens are required?
Most of my servers run 'headless', with serial ports connected to a terminal server. I have a single console server that handles all of the serial connections from the individual systems' serial console.
All of the routers, switches, UPS systems and other 'infrastructure' is on an identical setup, with extra security and logging.
In this design, I have one desktop system (FreeBSD) and screen (18" LCD) for each operator station, plus two large screen displays that show the current network status (one map, one showing alerts and status messages from the monitoring software).
The remote serial consoles are accessible via SSH (and strong authentication) from anywhere in the local network, so sysadmins and network admins can perform their duties without having to physical visit the data center.
By using the free 'screen' software to handle the serial port connections, we get a disk log of console activity, a scrollback buffer, and the ability to 'kibbutz', have two users share access to a single console, even though one might be in the NOC and the other user at home connected via VPN.
This design scales up well, I can get ~100 consoles on two PII/300 machines (retired PC desktops running OpenBSD), and adding additional hosts is as simple as buying another terminal server.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
We have five racks for the actual computer room, and need around 25 screens for the command console. Add to this bench space for repairs, and things like: a cupboard, bookshelf, plus more storage space, and the design becomes more complicated. We need enough space for three or four admins. Has anyone seen plans for this type of setup ?
:-)
.eu land, will even do machine rooms for food (and drink and ). Leave a reply here if you are hiring
5 racks is not a lot, but leave space for 10 or 15 for future expansion. If the PHB gives you any grief on this, you want to present him with a paper to be signed by the CEO that he is not planning on any growth at all over the next decade. No new customers, no increase in revenue, profits, or employees. That is usually enough to get them to approve a larger space for you and the machines.
You also need to hire someone who has done this before, who knows all about all the little things like glare from the windows and morning/evening temperature shifts in the building and HVAC. A knowledgeable contractor will then sub-contract the various bits to other professionals. Certainly you will need an HVAC team, an electrician, cabling guys, fire suppression specialists, a security guy, and an architect. Yes, all that for just 5 racks and room for 4-10 admins.
You will need aircon to keep the racks cool. Count on 5000 watts of power from 5 fully loaded racks, which equates to 15000 BTU/Hr of cooling needed to keep the servers running. Most office buildings can only do 2-3000 BTU/Hr of cooling in an area, so the machine room will need local, dedicated cooling systems, which possibly means an external chiller and water pipes under the floors.
Each rack requires 3 square metres (or yards) of space, 1 square metre for the rack, and 1 each front and back for the doors. Space above the ceiling and below the floor for cables, electricity, water, fire suppression, drains, etc. Repair area must be separate from the main machine area, physically and electrically.
Electricity will be specced by the electician for the power-on surge, multiplied by the Power Factor. Only a licensed electrician can tell you what all the local laws require/forbid and can sign off the installation with the local authorities. YOU can NOT do this unless you go to night school for a long time and pick up an electrical contractors license. Cheaper to hire a pro
Human work spaces can NOT have any noisy equipment running, the cool looking cabinets should have sound damping. Google for the relevent laws of dB per day exposure in your area. The HVAC guys will have to provide large surface area low noise vents, with multiple zones and controls. Consider putting the fluorescent lights onto 3-phase power. Incandescent floor lamps if you don't/can't.
There are about a thousand things to know about when building a dedicated machine room and "star trek" command centre. My best advice would be to hire the pros, and watch and note everything they do. Then next time an employer asks you about this, you will have a valuable job skill.
Check fatbrain or amazon for books about this topic, I'm sure someone has written this down at least once.
A few years ago I specced out a small machine room, with 16 racks. When the room was originally planned in 1996, the company just didn't count on any growth whatsoever. None! They had two racks then, and figured that would hold them for ever. Totally clueless PHB (but I repeat myself). 3 years later I came on the scene, just before the new building was finished. I pointed out the lack of HVAC, electricity, access control, etc. We asked the HVAC guy if he could cool 30000 Watts of power, and he just laughed. Maximum of 5 desktop PCs in this whole area was his answer, not the 60+ currently planned. Anything more was going to cost $$$, and time. So I got to write up the whole spec for the area over a weekend, and they put it all in, at a huge cost but only delayed the move-in by a week. At first they swore I had over-engineered by a huge amount and threatened lawsuits, but then dropped the whole matter. Last month I saw the room, all 16 racks full of equipment, 90 PCs in the command area, cooling and electricity stressed to the limit. They told me I had saved the company a few years ago, because if they hadn't built the building correctly before moving in, the cost of a retrofit would have been 10X to 20X the original cost, and the lost business due to a year delay would have sunk them even during the internet boom. But I knew enough then to ask all the pros for their advice, rather than do it all myself. A thousand details? Nahh, much, much more.
the AC
Freelancer looking for a job in
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Almost every computer installation is going to produce heat. A lot of heat.
Typical HVAC people don't understand this for some reason. They look at the square footage and then do some calculations for how many BTU's they think they will need. I've several times in projects asked "you are aware that we're going to have a lot of computers in here and we need a LOT of cooling and almost no heating (if not even some cooling) in the winter.". In at least a couple of cases I got an answer of "oh yeah, we do this all the time", and then they proceeded to install a system obviously not engineered for our application. I.E. undersized during the summer, and no cooling (heating only) during the winter.
Even a typical 75W average 1U server throws 250 BTU/hr. A rack with ~40 of these is 10,000 BTU/hr. This is enough BTU's to raise the temp in a well-insulated 12x12 room 40 degrees or so. Try putting 5 racks in.
For reference, a typical 120V window mount air conditioner is typically under 12,000 BTU's.
At some point you don't have to heat during the winter - just cool year round.
And in case I didn't mention this strongly enough to start with. Most HVAC contractors just don't get it. Make sure you get one that does.
Pay for a pro to do it and you can't go wrong. You have no idea what future requirements might be, but they might. You see some servers like IBM's big Regatta p690 have to have raised floor and certain load ratings, heigth and other specs on that raised floor that have to be satisfied before IBM will support them.
IBM Global Services can do this and Bruns-Pak is a company who has their stuff together. They did a seminar I attended on Fault Tolerant centers...centers designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane with out power, water, and even food and sleeping quarters being supplied to the staffers during the whole event. Alot of companies forget that Operations Staff and Sysadmins need food while taking care of an emergency especially one that lasts for several days.
They can build you a center that costs 1 dollar per square foot (no raised floor, basically a room) or X amount (too high) with all of the robustness of NORAD's Crystal Palace. It all depends on what you want/need.
If I were to plan one for our location, I would build a one floor facility with no windows, chiller's in a protected area (inside the building, not on the roof), generators in a protected area, UPS, nice and high raised floor, possibly a tall ceiling (I hear that the new standard ceiling height is 40 feet....for taller racks), the building should be hardened against the weather in your area.....meaning it should be very tough in Ohio so it could withstand a Tornado. Ohio doesn't get very many cat 5 hurricanes so we don't have to go that far. Also, have a operations center so your operators don't have to be in the room. This saves sanity for mthe rush of the AC/units. Have a BATHROOM not far from the center....preferably connected to it. You could make it a locker room so that if you have a multi day emergency, you could shower. Have food (at least vending machines or maybe an emergency box of food with food that can stand to sit on a shelf for a while (MRE's would work). Also, you need a coffee pot (GREAT for LONG NIGHTS!). Also, get cable trays for managing the cat5, cat6 or fiber. They are for more then making things neet, they also protect the cable from and errant floor tile landing on a fiber and crushing it, or from cutting a patch cable. That's just the things I could think of. The pro's will not forget anything. It's what they do. Don't just pay those pro's to implement YOUR design....have them do the design with you. It's not the big thing's you will miss when doing a computer room. It's the little things that turn out to be big things too that you miss. This is why I say GET A PRO!
Gorkman
Good advice.
... you might consider finding someone else.
I'd add, though, that you would still probably like to have at least a good conceptual idea about what you're asking for before beginning consultations with an architect. Don't assume an architect knows what is and isn't important to you.
Also remember, the most important design decisions happen early. As the project progresses, the broad brush strokes of the early conceptual design will become more detailed.
Good architects listen, communicate, and would like your feedback. If you find yourself doing business with someone who does the meet-and-greet and then disappears for awhile
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Use full length racks (ie, racks that aren't just a single frame but are multiple frames to support the backs of large objects. Buy racks with builtin power management or install your own quality power management system with remote monitoring and control capabilities like APC's solutions.
While we're on the topic of power, the entire server farm should have conditioned power (ie, large UPS or battery solution) and should also have backup generator power. We're a small regents school in a midwest state. Even we have a natural gas generator for our server farm. Also put the admins' workstations on these protected outlets (mark the outlets well and educate the admins on not plugging in their refrigerators or space heaters into these outlets). Use multiple protected circuits in your server farm. You shouldn't have 10 machines and monitors on a single circuit. Never put a laser printer on the same circuit as a server.
Build an extensive KVM system and don't forget to utilize remote serial consoles too. Those two should always be built in parallel. All to frequently one is built without the other.
You need good cooling. Strike that, you need excellent cooling. You room should be very cool. Heat is the number 1 killer or electronic components. Keep the room cool and have you admins bring in jackets if they need to work in the server room. The room should be cold enough that a human feels very chilly, almost cold when they are in the room. This is another reason why you don't want your admins stationed in that room. They'll always be sick!
Your personnel should not be placed in the same room as the hardware. The background noise would drive them insane. Also consider possible medical risks from being around monitors and hardware all day long. Sure, it hasn't happened yet but I believe that someday some medical thing will be blamed on all those electronics. Better safe than sorry.
It sounds corny but strictly enforce a not eating/drinking policy in the server farm. Consider the room a psuedo clean room. An accident at your workstation might cost you a keyboard. An accident in a server farm might cost you a Sun Enterprise 10k (or a lot of parts and time).
Build your server farm with network storage and backup in mind. Build a SANs infrastucture into the design. Something I personally love to do is build a secondary server farm *only* high speed network that all servers are a part of. Each server connects to this network with a 2nd nic and uses RFC 1918 addressing. The network is not available from the outside world. You can use it for secure high-speed communication between your servers for LDAP, NIS, DNS, NTP, NFS, r*, whatever you need. Maybe you don't connect your servers to a SANs. Maybe you connect 3 NFS servers to it and NFS mount everything. Put those NFS servers on this high-speed network. It is an excellent way to provide high-speed and secure network access between your servers.
Always keep security in mind when you build it. "Do I need a DMZ?", "Do I need a partial DMZ or layered DMZ?", "Am I running any servers that only need to contact other in-house servers?", "Does one of my servers only need to be contacted from within my company or a small group in my company?", "Which servers are more of a threat to my other servers (ie, servers with user shell accounts) and what do I need to do to protect my other servers from this one?", "Is the network I'm connecting this server to secure enough for the data it houses?". The more of these things you think now, the less likely it is that you'll have to explain why one of these systems was hacked to a suit.
The best recommendation I can make for a server farm is to appoint (or higher if you're big enough) a server farm administrator. Make this person responsible for managing the power situation in the server room. Make them responsible for administrating the network in the server room. Give this person the authority to bitch slap people that eat and drink in the server room. If needed, give this person the authority to perform a remote security audit of a server to see if it is compromising the security of the other servers in the server room. Make this person responsible for the KVM installation, console server, and rack hardware in the server room.
For a admin room, I recommend having a conference room handy nearby in the office with a computer and project built into the room. Give you admins some privacy. Ideally they'd have their own offices. Maybe for some senior admins this more of a possibility. Give them plenty of space. Let them have multiple machines and monitors and give them the space to do so. Let them pick some of their office furniture, most importantly their chairs. Keep power management in mind in your cubicle farm just like you did in the server room. Allow them to have mini-fridges. Allow them to eat at their desks. Give them access to a kitchen area with a microwave, big fridge, sink, maybe cook-top but it's unlikely, and table to sit down at and eat if they want. Give them a lounge area where they can take their laptops and go sit in big comfy chairs and sofas. This could double as a room to nap in during an all-nighter or crisis. Provide wireless network access but HEAVILY secure that network. You admin network MUST, I repeat, **MUST** be kept secure! Encryption is a must. Physical security is a must. A firewall in front of your admin area is a must. If someone is using a Windows machine, FORCE that user to use a PRIVATE IP and STRONG anti-virus software. Don't let the lax security of a Windows machine compromise your admin network. If needed, give each of your admins their own subnet-based VLAN, say a /29 each. The other admins can use that to increase their own security. The admin area and server room must remained locked at all times. Utilzie keycards and PIN numbers. Perform a security check of all new employees prior to highering them.
Hell, I'm rambling now. You get the point though. Most of these things are achievable with ease and stubborn determination. Good luck!
Another question is whether you intend to maintain the systems, or just let them wear out. Inktomi doesn't maintain its servers; they install them in clusters of 100, and remotely power off the ones that break. When enough have failed, the whole cluster is replaced with new equipment. This cuts the people cost way down, and reduces maintenance-induced failures. If your application is very regular, like a search engine, that may work for you.
I've worked in three data centres. One small, cobbled together one, and two larger ones done properly...
Things to consider in my opinion...
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. But if you get all of these ideas incorporated into your new data centre then you are doing well.
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
The amount of fighting between the techs as to who gets to sit in the "Captian's Chair" would end any chance for productivity ever again. This solution should also only be implemented if you can get a device that will make the room make that weird sonar like sound that was always on the bridge of the enterprise in the old shows. :)
Keep Austin Weird!
There's nothing more satisfying than picking up a casette tape from your little scanner+recorder (situated just outside the target's property line) after a maintenance weekend and end up with the root and enable passwords for all of their critical systems.
There are various degrees of 'security', from true frequency hopping spread spectrum through actual voice scramblers.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Whatever you do, you have to have a glass cubicle. With a super tall chair, so that you can talk without people seing your face.
(It is so much more evil this way)
There are many complexities to designing a computer room and command center. I so happen to work for a company that is the best at designing them. Information on the company can be found at http://www.bruns-pak.com Look at our client list. We have been in this business for over 20 years and have partnerships with the leading equipment companies. I am not trying to advertise but since you asked for help...there it is.