How Would You Design Your Dream Office?

An anonymous reader writes "My company is building a new office. As the local IT Guy, I've been asked to design my new office from the ground up. If you were given the opportunity to design your dream office, what features would you include? What things would you try to avoid? I get to determine absolutely everything. The catch? I have to share my office space with all the network equipment. Just 4 standard racks, and all your basic telephone and network wiring. Can anyone help me get started? I have no idea where to even begin."

Comments

My recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Separate your work area from the racks with a wall.
2) Soundproof & insulate that wall or your office will be noisy & 65 degrees F year round.
3) Make sure there's extra room in the server side of it, or your office will get taken over.
4) Your desk should face the door. Otherwise, people will always walk up behind you.
5) Get a filing cabinet, some drawers and some shelves to keep your stuff in. Whenever you get paperwork, file it if it would be troublesome to get another copy or you'll refer to it often, recycle it otherwise.

Re:My recommendations

[TClevenger]

2) Soundproof & insulate that wall or your office will be noisy & 65 degrees F year round.

This is absolutely the most important part. I had an office in a server room for a year, and the hearing damage and stress caused by server noise is not worth it.

Also, separate the A/C controls completely. Run your office off the building common supply, and purchase separate units for the server room.

Re:My recommendations

[jdray]

Agreed. If your company is large enough to have four racks full of equipment, it's large enough to have a (small) datacenter. The cooling requirements for that much gear are non-trivial, and trying to balance the cooling and the heat output so that the air temp is comfortable for you would be an exercise in futility.

A small room, 12' by 12', is about what it takes to house four racks. Okay, you could go with 10' x 12' if you only make space on one end to get around the racks, but 12x12 will give you a little growth room (one rack worth). You need space behind the racks as well as in front.

Separate exterior doors to the datacenter is a good idea if you expect the IT department to grow beyond about five people, but for a small shop, having access to the datacenter via your office not only provides a level of security (your office becomes a sort of DMZ), but tends to insure that your office will always be the office of "the IT guy," since no manager wants to have people traipsing through his office all the time to "fool with the computers."

To further your insurance, do a nice custom wiring job in your office space so that you have extra network ports (including some out-of-band ports for monitoring), power outlets that are on the same UPS system as the data center, and a few special ports like serial lines to the console ports of your network and telephone switches. Furthermore, put in a wall-mount PC rack high up on one wall (complete with network port and power outlet) and tie it to a large LCD screen for at-a-glance system monitoring. Don't make the screen too large, as it will be seen as garish. I wouldn't go over 37".

As others suggested, your desk should face the door. In the "public" space between your desk and the door wall should be a small table with two or three chairs for closed-door meetings. Store stacks of paperwork on the table, giving the visual cue that work is always going on in your office. The rest of the office should be clean and well kept. You're the head of IT, everything should be digital, except for your nod to interaction with "the rest of the world" via the papers on the meeting table.

Leave space on the walls for a little art of your choosing. I recommend landscapes or florals, as they tend away from hard lines. It gives you something to look at that's not rigid in nature, and can be very relaxing. Furthermore, it gives the impression to visitors that you're deeper in personality than "just a computer geek." Also, have several plants around the office. They help freshen the air and further take away the stark stigma. Get someone else in the office into a routine of helping you maintain the plants so you can occasionally take a vacation without them dying. If your office has a plant service, so much the better.

The door to your office should have a card-key lock on it, as should the door between your office and the datacenter. Be sure that the access lists for both locks are separate. You want to be sure that you can filter the access for both spaces differently (the whole "DMZ" thing again).

Good luck. I hope it works out for you. I suspect it won't. You should do a Slashback and let us all know how things turn out.

Re:Office space?

[ttapper04]

The square footage of your office is most important. The bigger your office in relation to those around you the more important you are, and thus the more "dreamy" your office is.

Cover up empty wall space with your favorite artwork.

If you are lucky enough to have a window, then orient your desk so you can look out.

Proper lighting is key. My 20x16 office has 4 florescent fixtures each with 4 bulbs, and when a few go out you can tell a big difference.

Start by partitioning and keeping it modular

[Bonzoli]

Get a cube with Tall sound absorbing walls, now double that wall thickness, ceiling partitions should be the same. Also include a door on the cube, the noise will be an issue.

Get a modular wire system for the cube walls, you might even ask for a modular fiber patch panel system, there is a nice 6 port one on the market. You can run extra cat 5 for the speaker cables. :)

Run overhead wire rack system.

Cooling is the only thing under the raised floor.

You might want to carpet the cube area with a static resistant flooring that can help insulate the room from sound, static elec, and help keep it warmer then the 65ish your computers will need.

If you can install your own venting then you should be better off in the desk area.

The sad part is you will need to make sure the fire system has a stay/standby/hold button near your desk and your desk should be near to the main server door, as in 5 seconds max. These buttons generally only put the fire system on hold as long as you hold them in, once released you have a set amount of time to get out.

Badge security on the main door to get into the server room, so not just anyone can walk in, physical security of the servers is important. Also this gives peace of mind if you can get the noise down to a passable level.

I personally would love to have a desk system made out of legos, this way I could build any extra things later I'd think were useful. Dont forget an extra 100k legos so you get it in the budget for the new building. Perhaps just the surfaces in lego, that might work.

Make sure you get low heat lighting that isn't going to strain your eyes, server room lighting sucks for reading white paper print or certain computer screens.

Ground Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Start from the ground up with basic building infrastructure such as power, cooling, and wiring. There is nothing worse than setting up a new office and then scrambling to deal with circuits tripping and overheating servers. Its hard to be more specific without knowing what kind of gear you using. If it's like any other office move/opening that I have done a lot of your design will be based upon the current setup. Are you reusing equipment? What are the pain points in your current network and IT infrastructure? Is heating and/or power an issue that has you coming in on nights and weekends or keeping you awake at night? Where are the performance bottlenecks in your current environment? If your business relies on traditional back-office applications or large file transfers it might be time to upgrade your switches and consider 10GbE uplinks. If you are moving to web apps you might want to think about getting a bandwidth upgrade while you have the chance. If you have been thinking about virtualization consider doing it now instead of after you move. If you are running out of storage or have a disk bottleneck this might be the time to install a SAN. These are the kind of questions I ask myself when doing an office move.

Here are a few really general things that I have learned from setting up SMB IT infrastructures.

Consider collocation if you are near a major city or internet backbone. It's worth it.

Power is something you need to do the math on yourself and don't assume that electricians are going to know how much power you will need for a "server room". Assuming 4 fully loaded racks of midrange DELL/HP rack mount servers with redundant power supplies I would want at minimum 2 (120V 20A) dedicated circuits per rack. Most reputable server vendors list power consumption numbers and always make sure to leave yourself enough headroom for growth beyond what the executive types are telling you about. Don't forget about battery backup power, and get the ones with ethernet management ports and configure them. If you are like me and Electrical Engineering is not a core competency do your homework.

Push for dedicated air conditioning system, and use the building system as a backup. All that hot air has to exhaust somewhere so keep that in mind when you are choosing your server room. Don't assume that the HVAC guys really understand how much heat 4 racks of servers will be putting off, do your homework. Make sure to get an environment sensor with a camera, something like the NetBotz product from APC.

If you don't have good physical security, now is the time.

Make sure that you have good network wiring and wire management in and outside the server room. Say no to spaghetti networks and residential networking switches crammed into nooks in the walls. I'm a big fan of putting in conduit where I can to future proof the network.

Without knowing more about your environment and the company that you work for that's about all I can say. Make sure that you have a good foundation and if it's option consider collocation, even big IT shops are doing it.

Re:Huh?

[smithcl8]

Believe it or not, it can happen. I have my own office at my new gig, which I just started 4 months ago. Before I started, I got a phone call leaving me my new office number, phone number, and email address...everything was set. When I arrived, my name was on the window next to the door of the office and my other window overlooks some trees in a little yard. I have a desk, an open bookshelf, a bookshelf with sliding glass doors, and a table for builds/random work.

I couldn't believe it then and I still can't. Only problem is that coffee and the refrigerator are about 100 yards away at the other end of the hall.

Re:First investment

[BWJones]

Hey, as Internet servers, those little Mac Mini's with on board gigabit ethernet are capable of more than you might imagine with one currently serving upwards of 45,000 graphics intensive pages a day.

Re:Avoid wireless

[Quadraginta]

Humans have not evolved to deal with radiation at these frequencies.

Dude...are you aware of how much energy the Sun puts out in the radio spectrum? Or lightning storms? Get a wideband receiver and tune it to 1 GHz or so, near the wireless frequencies, and turn down the squelch. All that static noise you hear is natural radiation on radio frequencies. Been around since God was in diapers.

And while we're on the subject, you might google around for any successful example of radiofrequency EM radiation being used to cause a chemical reaction (which is the only way it could damage your precious bodily fluids). You won't find any. The photon energy in the RF spectrum is absurdly small compared to typical chemical bond energies. Heck, it's way less than the photon energy of infrared radiation, which of course your own body emits in copious quantities.

Your comment reminds me of a James Thurber story, in which his grandmother (who grew up in the 19th century) insisted that all the electrical outlets in her house be stopped up, because she was sure invisible electricity was leaking out of them, spreading out across the floor, and could be causing all kinds of mischief. After all, human beings did not evolve around electricity...

Partition into office, foyer, server room

[Khopesh]

You want two or three partitions in this room. Refer to the server area as the "server room" and your desk area as your "office." If there's a large enough entry/path area, call that either the "entryway" or the "foyer" ... this establishes the room as a suite and helps distinguish between your space and the IT department's space (even if the dept. is currently just you). Put a nameplate or whatever on the outside of the door (or next to it) that says "IT Suite" or thereabouts (you can even put the subdivisions under it, with your name and "Server Room" getting separate entries).

Give yourself a corner desk, either an L-shape or a U-shape. You want to face the door, so this means one side of the desk follows the wall and another side sticks out into the room so that you have to walk around three sides of it to sit at your chair (this partitions the foyer and the office). Put a big shelving unit in the foyer so that people can come in and grab things without disturbing you (or falling out of your peripheral vision).

The "server room" portion should be well partitioned (hopefully with a floor-to-ceiling wall), specifically for insulation against noise and climate control (make sure those rack fans are pointed away from your desk!). It should also have an operating table, specifically always clear so that if something breaks you have space to work on it. The best way to ensure it is always clear is to have it as an island (against no wall); all walls should have shelves or racks so that the table never gets pushed against a wall. The server room portion should either have a raised floor or a ceiling with easy-access drop-down power conduits and network lines (this solves the issues of an island table, and makes for a much easier environment to maintain). The trash can should be near the door (or outside it) so that the janitor doesn't mess anything up, and the room should lock with a different key than the one to your office (the janitor shouldn't have access to it). You move the trash outside the server room when you go home (if it's full) and move it back into the server room as needed.

Put at least one waist-high shelf right by the door to the server room for cups and food, and leave an empty cup there to help remind people (including yourself) to keep food out of the server "room."

Re:Raised floors don't work here

[rcw-work]

That's exactly what I meant by ladder racking (or cable runways, or whatever the kids are calling it these days). Yes, the part that you can see looks better with a raised floor, but it sucks so much to run cable under a floor that that's all anyone ever does - no one ever organizes or cleans under there. Sure, they'll take a wet/dry vac to it after an A/C accident, but they won't go back under if they remember they forgot a can of soda pop down there. It'll sit there until the fruit flies eat it all up.

My favorite thing for patch panels/switches is to put them on separate horizontally adjacent racks. A cable goes up from the patch panel to the cable management bracket, over to a gap between the racks, forms a U where all of the slack is stored, then goes into cable management again and then down to its switch port. It looks good with all of the slack in one place, it's easy to make changes, and you don't have cables running directly across the front of equipment (making it impossible to remove, or in some cases, inspect).

And if you do wall-mount the switches and patch panels, use a hinged rack (example) so you can get to the back of it. And of course, tell your cabler which side should be hinged so they'll be forced to use two extra brain cells to run the cable so it can be hinged.

Re:Dream Office?

[jmauro]

It's from the second episode of Futurama. Bender walks around complaining about being left out of things and says he'll do it better but with "blackjack and hookers" then says, forget what ever it was he was being left out of and just with the blackjack and hookers.

Re:First investment

[TClevenger]

Absolutely. I'd take a cube over a desk in a server room any day.

They may have to...

[msauve]

(go even further.)

OSHA has something to say about the matter.

Re:what about the fire precautions?

[oddaddresstrap]

Make sure the main fire alarm can be easily heard in your office and that you have more than one way out (what if the fire is outside the only door?). Alternate egress is usually required by the fire code, but is sometimes overlooked.

Re:First investment

[base3]

When the company fires you for being a whistle blower you can ring the register.

Retaliation is incredibly hard to prove, and everyone from the top down would be on board with painting the whistleblower as a long-term, incompetent malcontent, even if it takes falsifying records to do it. Bad idea--also, lawyers don't take those cases on contingency, so he'll need a large bankroll in place first.

I've been able to do this a few times.

[JoeGee]

My dream office starts at the breaker box. If they'll give you failover power generation, that's the ticket. Since it sounds like you're working for a smaller company, instead try to sell them on in-line voltage filtering and surge supression, with plenty of amperage. Imagine every outlet in your office having perfect current. You'll need outlets to offer that current. I suggest two strips of outlets, one at floor level and one at waist height, all around the room.

You'll need your own climate control panel for your office, and you'll need air purification for your equipment. I suggest a dedicated duct and vent running right from the climate plant, just for your space. A space under the door will allow air to move out of your room and help maintain a positive pressure environment. Ask for an easily-replaced filter cartridge system for your duct, and make certain you get a good supply of filters to do a monthly change as part of regular maintenance.

Give yourself room to string plenty of cables unobtrusively by either installing a sunken sub-floor with a static-proof grid flooring that can be easily removed, or have channels cut in the concrete slab with tiles that can be easily pulled. Either works well.

If you're not into pulling cables through walls, pre-cable as much as possible. Along with gigabit-capable copper consider having fiber pulled to each wall (room configurations change, plan for it) in each room, even if it will stay dark for the time being. The world is indeed moving towards wireless, but a wired backbone will continue to be the most secure, fastest option for the time being. If you don't mind pulling cables, consider having nice spacious conduit installed in the ceilings and walls. It'll make your future life much easier. Hell, ask for the conduit anyways. It'll make future calls to the electricians go quicker too.

Ask for secure storage space. A nice walk-in sized storage room with a decent shelving/binning system and a securely locked fireproof steel door will be a decent place to safeguard your spare server parts, your backup safe, and the high dollar IT pieces and parts you don't want every employee to be able to take home (hey, how about firewalls between your office and the rest of the building? This is a dream office, right?)

Speaking of fire, you might want to let these folks know that water and sensitive electronics are not a good mix. A nice electronics-friendly dry fire extinguishing system would be a good idea for your space.

Windows? Windows are optional. An interior window of shatter-proof glass might improve the view, and let in some outside light. An exterior window might be considered a security risk, but if you're on a higher floor, why not have a view of the great outdoors?

These are a few suggestions based on my experiences. Your mileage may vary.

Joe G.

Re:First investment

[upside]

I bought an old Cisco 2900XL for home use/playing around but had to relegate it to testing only because of the fan noise. At work the new models are just about the same.

A Cisco router creates 43-57 dBA, equivalent to a TV set blaring constantly one meter away. Four full height racks implies quite a few boxes, too. Not a good working environment.

Re:Dream office? That's easy: 15 steps

[laejoh]

1) Hot secretary sitting in side

There, I corrected it for you.

Jebus! Slashdotters, no wonder you're all singles!

Re:My recommendations, Reflection

[Joseph Hayes]

4) Your desk should face the door. Otherwise, people will always walk up behind you.

You might wanna make sure the poster/wall decoration directly behind you isn't reflective. An employee of mine was mindful enough to arrange his monitors and desk to face the door, but whenever I walked into his office all I had to do was look above his head and see what was on his screen. I made sure to move MY framed poster after observing his folly. :)

card key lock note..

[tempest69]

Make sure that the machine that controls the card key locks is not behind a card key locked door that doesn't have a regular key. Because your always one stupid mistake from needing a power saw, and drywall patch.

dont ask

Storm