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

First investment

[jachim69]

The best pair of noise canceling headphones you can find. 4 racks of equipment in your office? I'd go bonkers in about a day.

Re:First investment

[ILongForDarkness]

Hmm, I agree with most of what others say in that you're going to need to seperate your office and your network stuff and allow sufficient space for the network stuff to grow. A/C might not be enough, I'm looking at building a mini datacenter for my department (2 racks, 4 Sun workstations 5 PC's), even with that our plant ops said we'd need proper cooling installed. You'll also need space behind and in front of the racks so count on about 1/3rd of the datacenter space being racks, the other 2/3rds will be a server length front and back, add extra space for cooling if needed (they might be able to drop a cooler in the ceiling so you wouldn't need the floor space for it then).

Also, how important is your equipment? Assume the room were to disapear what would happen? If the answer is the department/company will be inoperable until the new equipment arrives and you are able to restore stuff from dumps then you both need some redundancy, and are going to want a proper fire suppression system. If you use a neutral gas suppression your going to need an airtight space for the servers (which will probably help with the noise too).

If your job is anything like 90% of IT professionals, you'll spend the minority of your time in your datacenter, that is what terminal services is for. Also, think about all the time spent sourcing vendors, doing project management work, any coding you have to do etc. I'd really fight to have the equipment put somewhere else if I was you. Figure out what percentage of time you need physical contact with the servers/switches and let your boss know. I mean it doesn't make sense to live with the noise and run at reduced efficiency for 80% of your work day for the sake of 300 sqft or so of floor space, if there is any way to avoid it. Also, if the sound proofing ends up sucking, you'll have to take phone calls and stuff with that crap in the background.

It is funny, companies worry about their 20k per year factory workers when it comes to noise, and environmental conditions, but the 60-150k IT guy gets the shaft. Apparently server noise has a different effect on the ears than machine noise.

Re:First investment

[Gerzel]

IT guys are not generally part of Unions.

Re:First investment

[magarity]

The best pair of noise canceling headphones you can find
 
You and everyone else: the office is to be shared with the NETWORKING racks, not the SERVER racks. There'll be a jillion blinky LED's and a few low volume fans but there won't be the A/Cs, blaring fans, etc, that everyone is going on about. The room will be warmer than usual with even that kind of gear but with a little planning like an independent climate control it won't be that bad.
 
I'd just recommend you get a color of network cable that you like (I prefer the dark blue ones to the bright yellow ones) and plenty of organizers like the overhead raceways to keep them lined up neatly. Maybe a false ceiling under the raceways to hide them completely. Oh, and natural lighting. If you don't have a window, can you at least get a light tube?

Hate to be Captain Obvious

[avandesande]

@home

Re:They're going to stow you away in the server ro

[mrsmiggs]

Exactly you can't work in the same room as servers and network equipment an IT Department in an office needs ideally three areas.

1. Server room. So cold that you need to add two layers of clothing when you go in. It should have tiled and raised floors and separate AC power circuit.

2. Secure storage area, your server room is not a dumping ground for unused hardware, boxes of wires, software and whatever else that has a plug.

3. Work area, in addition to a desk with triple screen linked to a kvm for your desktop and laptop you need a work surface on which you can do hardware repair and configuration.

what about the fire precautions?

[petes_PoV]

OK, I think we'vew all worked out that they want to site you in the computer cupboard (away from all the "real" people).

First of all, consider the safety aspects. If you're going to be the only human being in there, either by design or because any other team members will be absent for any length of time, what will you do if there's a fire in one of the racks, or an electrical accident?

Just installing fire-supression is more cure than prevention and it doesn't stop you getting injured if the fire is between you and the exit.

If you're surrounded by electrical equipment, I would hope you company would enforce a ban on liquids (coffee etc.) in the room. If they don't do this from the outset, they will as soon asn health and safety get sight of theplan - or someone spills a drink over the equipment. How will you deal with that?

Finally, expect that over time, more and more equipment will get moved into the room and it will encroach on your "office" space. Where will you personally draw the line? When it becomes a general store room? When the cleaner starts leaving their buckets on your desk?

Priorities

[ndrw]

I'd suggest you need more info before you go start your dream office, this would be my list:

1. Budget - How much can you spend?
   
2. Space - How much room can you take up?
   
3. Uptime - How long do the systems need to run?
   
4. Growth - How many people and how many servers in the life of the building?
   
5. Due Date - How long do you have to design? How long to build?
   

Ideally, you'd have a ton of cash, plenty of time and space, and clear constraints from your management about growth and uptime. Of course, if any business operated like that, they'd be bankrupt already, so you'll probably get a small stipend for construction and move-in, no idea how many people you'll have to support, and a tiny little chunk in the middle of the building for your new digs.

Once you get what info you can, I'd suggest creating a list of priorities addressing the following issues:

1. Space - you need enough space to hold the racks, remember workspace in front and behind the gear.
   
2. Electricity - a few wall sockets aren't going to cut it for anything more than half a dozen servers. Depending on budget, try getting a sub-panel with emergency cut-off, UPS on main, and possibly diesel generator. Do you know what your required disaster recovery and uptime are?
   
3. Air Conditioning - four racks of gear can generate quite a lot of heat, work with a local heating and air conditioning vendor to get TWO cooling units and automatic switchover between them in the event of thermal events (heat beyond a set limit).
   
4. Racks - standardize and buy extra! You'll always need more space later, so build it out now, while the budget is already in the works. I'm a big fan of the four post style with square hole racks right now, a lot of new servers (including blade chassis) are coming with quick snap square brackets on the rails, so you can mount them quickly!
   
5. Sound dampening - there's no way you can work right next to four racks of gear, unless you're already deaf. PLEASE find a way to get some kind of wall and door between you and the gear, put a window in if you have to be able to see the equipment.
   
6. Fire suppression - depending on budget, these can be worth the high price for an energen, halon, etc. system.
   

Once you have the server portion of your office set up, I'd look for ways to make yourself comfortable. This is where it gets way more personal, but consider how many people will be on your staff, how much equipment you'll need, a workbench, network monitoring display (and sound system for switching over to movie mode), and always remember to FACE THE DOOR with your monitor in front of you... it's good feng shui, and your boss won't see when you're playing poker online.

Good luck, and have fun!

Cheers!

Become Mr. invisible

[petes_PoV]

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

Better, make sure there is no line of sight from the door to your desk. That way no-one can see if you're sitting behind it without coming into the room.

OSHA

[BSDevil]

Don't forget to check out OSHA rules (assuming you're in the US - if not, s/OSHA/your local occupational health authority/) regarding noise levels. Depending on how much crap you have, it may make cross the limit for an unprotected workplace environment - which will either lead to you getting an office in another room (good outcome), or you getting your ass fired (bad outcome).

One Man's Horrible Office...

[Obiwan Kenobi]

...is another man's IT Kingdom.

Firstly, with that huge amount of rack equipment, you'll need to either separate yourself from it with a wall, or you'll freeze from the constant A/C that is required and go nuts from the noise as previously stated.

For the more mundane details:

- Cable Management. Try to build the room with cable management in mind. Where do the cables go? I wouldn't mention this if you hadn't mentioned the racks. It sounds like you're building a server room that you're going to put your primary machine in. That's great and all, but that's also still "The Server Room" and not "An Office" with carpet and quiet.

- Power sources. Off the ground, preferably over your head.

- Different colored cabling. The more precise you can get this, the easier it is to find/test/figure out problems. "The web servers are on the green cabling and the file server on red" is one of the most appreciated phrases ever when things go wrong.

- Room to grow. You've grown this much so far. In five years you're going to have more machines in there. Can you handle it and still have "your side"?

- Has your management taken into account the noise factor?

- Monitor arm. Now you can install one of these! I heard these were sweet and I think it'd be really cool (dream, right?)

- Fire protection system. Being in the vicinity of those servers will probably put you very close to their fire protection. Have you thought about what systems you want to keep them safe?

- What about Water protection, if that's a consideration?

- RJ11 and RJ45 jacks. Put jacks everywhere, even if they're not being used. You can never have too many jacks or wires run.

- Filing cabinets, shelving, etc. Just wanted to mention that.

- Build a floor plan in a flowcharting program. Map out EVERYTHING. Where you want everything to go and everything to face. (Face the door as someone said earlier). There are plenty of neato Web 2.0 flowcharting programs, or just download a demo copy of Visio or something (if you have a mac, use OmniGraffle -- and for that matter, use it every day for all sorts of things, that program rules!)

- Media storage cabinet. You may want to look into something like this if you're keeping track of server backups, etc.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Re:My recommendations

[Ifni]

6) a fifth and sixth rack, or at least the space to put them. Seriously, plan to grow anywhere from 25-50% over the next five years unless you have reason to believe otherwise. This was hinted at in item 3, but warrants clarification/repeating.

Sliding glass door.

[gd2shoe]

Sliding glass door. Seriously. Good ones will block almost all of the sound, and management will still see it as one room, not two. As little as you really need to, you can still keep an eye on the equipment. I've seen this done once to great effect.

This also will keep you from freezing to death because of the AC.
(And do make sure it has good AC. Those servers will thank you.)

Space Planning

[Kryptic Knight]

Your comments
1) You want a serve room to hold 4 racks.
2) You want to place your 'office' alongside the server room

Assumptions
3) a Rack occupies a space 1m wide x 1m deep x 2m tall (some racks are 800mm x 800mm - it depends on the rack).
4) a rack needs a floor void below it and should have a gap between itself and the ceiling tiles of 0.5m)

Comments

a) You need to allow for expansion so commit for 1 extra rack in your plan.
this take the floor space to a minimum of 1m x 5m.

b) You should allow a 1 m walkway on all four sides!
firstly you want to get into all the front/back of a cabinet plus both ends.
so this takes the minimum to a 3m x 7m space.
if a fire breaks out half way along your exit route on one side you want an escape route the other way round.

c) You need space at one end for
- air conditioning unit
- floor standing UPS and Batteries (don't forget the battery package is going to be potentially large).
- a master power switch and a breaker switch.
each of the 30A twist-lock sockets needs a separate breaker.
depending on your power requirements you should allow for at two twist-lock ( IEC_60309 or similar) sockets per cab.
I would suggest a bay no less than 4m wide by 2m deep at one end of the room.

d) floor height & entryway
- access
most office space has a quite low raised flooring void. This is sufficient for normal power/data wiring.
however for comms rooms its a good idea to DOUBLE this void height.
Allow space for the LARGEST item to go through your doors. That may mean a FULL HEIGHT doorway,
the door may be a double or single+flap wide.
allow a RAMP not a step from your normal floorspace into the comms room.
- raised flooring suspension
allow for extra 'pillars' in the comms room to cope with the weight, especially for the UPS and COOLING.
- data cabling routes
allow for two routes IN/OUT of the room and establish a primary and secondary route. make that the fibre
loops go in one route and out the other. Allow for slack length on all cables.

- comms room security.
establish a WHO NEEDS to access this room list.
Security, Health & Safety / Fire Wardens, Compliance, IT
mandate an exclusion for everyone but IT when unaccompanied. Get the backing of the Directors & HR to control it.
use a security system to exclude unauthorised access and restrict dissemination of the ID codes.

e) Montitoring
consider an environmental monitor (APC have a range of 'wallbots / rackbot' equipment).
add a monitor to your COOLING and UPS to alert you of major failures.

f) Fire suppression
options are
GAS - expensive and takes up extra space. requires a sealed environment and separate maintenance.
WATER - from the normal sprinkler systems. wrecks your equipement.
if you're going the water route then ensure your sprinkler heads have CAGES of heavy mesh put around
each head and secured to the ceiling tiles. Then when you hit one with a ladder you don't have a wet-room.

g) Lighting.
make sure the lighting guys put the lights over the walk-routes and not over the cabinets.
yes I've seen this done.

h) Power requirements
feed a manufacturer with your equipment list and get them to run up the quote.
make sure you give them an autonomy time that is realistic.
does your new site have a backup power (deisel generator ?) that cuts