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

Office space?

[PyrotekNX]

Seriously, we have no idea what kind of room we have to work with, how many people you need space for, etc.

Raised floors don't work here

[rcw-work]

4 racks of computer equipment. Make it a proper little data centre with raised floors

And where are you going to put the ramp to wheel equipment up the extra 2 feet? Unless this is the basement and you can excavate and pour another slab, raised floors either need a lot of room to get into and out of, or they need their own floor (as in, "this entire first floor of this building is for the raised floor"). You won't have much luck convincing an architect to cut a 10x20' hole in a post-tensioned slab.

Just put the rack cabinets where you want them (3.5' of clearance in front, 2' to at least one side and the rear) and the plywood/OSB wall-o-punchdown-blocks where you want them, and install ladder racking between them so that all of the cables are organized and out of the way. Also, delivering each power circuit through conduit to receptacle boxes at the top of each rack cabinet is a really clean way of doing it - it prevents anyone from tripping over any power cords.

I suspect that a large percentage of raised-floor proponents haven't spent much time underneath one.

Re:Raised floors don't work here

[v1]

An easy solution is to have racks on a standard floor, and run the cables up and out of the racks and run on a cable track at about the 6.5 ft level between racks and patch panels.

This keeps the cables neatly in place and out of the way, is easy to maintain and make changes to, and does not require all the problems you can get with a drop floor. Running another cable in a drop floor can take 20 minutes and half a dozen pulled tiles, (and an RC monster truck helps..) or four minutes and no hassels with a tray and a stepstool.

In a lot of ways it's also nice to leave the servers and routers in the rack and put the switches over with the patch panel. I know some of those cables technically need to go down to the piece in the rack below them, but if you wun it all to patch panels, it saves endless trouble trying to make changes or cope with hardware failure that requires rerouting, It also prevents a wire nest from attacking you when you open up the back door on the rack. This only works well if you already have a clear idea of what needs to be in the rack and won't be making frequent changes to the rack contents.

When you're pawing around with a patch panel and a bunch of switches you are already in "wire nest mode" and are working with a much more consistent environment to work with, not hunting for what port is where on the back and which port is wan1 and which is wan2 etc, as they are not usually well marked. This arrangement forces you to consult documentation as to what's where and forces you to see the big picture which helps prevent stupid mistakes in crisis situations.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Freak]

Yup. When I was in a similar situation, I actually insisted on *NOT* being stuck in the server room. I had a small desk in the server room, which I would retreat to when needed (the server room had a lock,) but I wanted a cubicle like everyone else. (In our company, even the CEO only had a cubicle.) My first cubicle in the new space was the most 'scenic' view we had, a 'double cube' shared with the other IT guy, only side walls, no 'entry-side' wall. Later, when the company expanded, us two IT guys moved to the far side of the building, with our own fire escape out the window (which we, against fire code, put plants on.) In the new location, we had more room, and were more 'out of the way', but didn't have a good view out the window.

Although I often 'worked' from the Starbucks in the public square in front of the building, with my extension forwarded to my cell phone, and a Wi-Fi antenna pointed out our office window down at the public square. This was back in 2000, before there was much Wi-Fi at all, much less "public" Wi-Fi. I'd get a call asking for help, and VNC to the person's computer to fix it, and would sometimes get a "Hey, where are you, anyway? I don't see you in your cube..."

Avoid wireless

[PipingSnail]

Things to avoid: Wireless. Humans have not evolved to deal with radiation at these frequencies. Just say no. You don't need it. Sure, I'll modded down or labeled as a flake. I don't care. Neither should you. Go wired and stay that way. Stephen Use a mobile phone a lot? Suffering from short term memory loss? Wonder why?

Re:First investment

[dave562]

You beat me to it. Better add a parka to the list to cope with the air conditioning requirement to keep four racks cool. Or better yet, tell your employer to stop being so god damn cheap and have them build a real server room and offer to take a normal office or even a cube like everyone else. It will be worth it to not go home with a ringing in your ears and perma-tremors from shivering due to artic like air conditioning.

Re:Plenty of power

[zerocool^]

Also, make sure that your building contractors don't skimp on the AC even after you tell them what you need.

Case in point, at my soon to be ex-employer, we moved to a new building in the research park. Of course, they over-promised, and when it turned out we weren't going to get any space in the datacenter in the adjacent building, they stuck the server room in about 230 square feet, L-shaped, in the office building.

Well, first we had to scream and holler that we didn't want a carpeted floor, which they finally agreed to after explaining to them that we had like $120,000 worth of just SAN equipment where all their oh-so-important data was, and that the SAN is so sensitive to voltage changes that it comes with it's own power conditioning unit. That coupled with the dry, cold climate in Blacksburg in the winter eventually convinced them that static electricity is bad(tm).

Then, we ran the numbers into a Dell utility that we have where you input your server model numbers and specs, and it tells you what kind of power and HVAC you need. We ran several sets of numbers, one being with the 3 racks we have now which were about 1/2 populated, and one with our racks fully populated, which, considering we didn't have any of the 3 racks 4 years ago, we figured was a realistic 5 year projection. With our current load (quick list is 2 15-drive sans, about 20ish 1-U servers, and a smattering of 20 or so 2-U and 4-U servers, auto-tape loader, disk storage arrays, and APC 3000VA UPS's. Current load for an AC to keep the server room at 60-65 degrees is about 6-7 tons of AC. Fully loaded, we would need between 13 and 15 (since only about 80% of the servers are dells, we were estimating what the comparable dell model would be, so it's less accurate than it otherwise would be). Also, with current power needs, we'd need 6x 30A twistlock receptacles, and for full-bore, we'd need between 12 and 15 of them. So, of course, we asked for 15 tons of AC and 15 twist-lock 30A plugs.

We didn't hear anything else about it, but of course, we got there and only had 6 plugs (in the wrong places), a 5-ton AC ac (so the server room is about 73-75 in the summer when the sun is on that side of the building), and the intake and outlet vents all wrong. Wonderful.

Ride the builders and the executives, and demand to be involved in the process.

~Wx

Call this guy's decorator

[jjrff]

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html

Feng Shui. I am *not* kidding.

[Qbertino]

Grab a book on Feng Shui. This is not a joke. While I don't actually mean Feng Shui exactly, what I mean is get a grasp of the concept of 'organically' arranging your workplace. For the lack of a better term and concept, Feng Shui is a good place to look to get an idea of what good interior architecture is all about.

I'll continue the list with some random stuff that comes to mind, some of which others here have mentioned allready:

1.) Wallcolors, Plaster-Textureing. There are countless possibilities here - check them out. Be sure to check out the options for organic interior building materials aswell. Consider coloring or plastering different sections of the walls with different styles.

2.) I like Zen-Style. Blends well with a high-tech enviroment too. A sleek simple real-wood desk and side-table may be all it needs to pimp your enviroment just enough. Don't save in the wrong place, plan your setup and you might find that two neat pieces blend well with that glass-enclosure rack-shelf and leave you room to breathe and think.

3.) Make the rack nice to look at and quiet. Read: Multi-Layer glass all around. Tell your boss it needs a custom enclosure if you must. Consider giving the glass-enclosure-rack a prominent position in the room where you can reach the backdoor super easy without having to move it. A well-positioned fixed installation can be a neat interior feature. (check feng-shui on this if you're out of ideas - try out the looks in a 3D programm if the need be

4.) Plan your decoration. Crappy, tacky generic office-type decoration sucks. You'll know that once you've hand-picked one or two posters of pictures for your office and leave it at that. Plan the position of them and plan your lighting accordingly. Do all your pinwall type stuff on your computer. You're a geek, take advantage of that. You can completely void reality of all ugly work-related stuff and still get work done. (Just thinking of the shitty cube decorations posted at regular intervals here on /. makes me sick)

5.) Visit a few offices of the creative guys and girls. Better-running web agencies have a fable for stylish and hip work enviroments. They have the ideas aswell. Ripp off whereever you can and don't be ashamed of it. After all, they use OSS on their webservers, don't they? Sumo beanbags, Stokke Balans (arm)chairs, hand-rafted realwood shelves on oversized industrial-style rollers (built one myself - super-easy to move around), selected wallsections with crazy-ass grafity besides intentionally blank walls. You get the picture. There are countless websites with picture of cool offices around the globe. Do some research.

6.) You a Developer? Software Team Lead? Blackboard! And I mean an old-school (literally!) real-wood big ass black (literally!) board. If you can't find one, plan it's size and position, bolt a board to the wall and paint it with black-board paint. This little german software shop did it right - surf around their site a little and check out their pictures --> http://freiheit.com/ . I'd actually like to work there just judging by the fotos.

7.) Ikke-Bana. (Ancient Japanese Art of Flower Arrangement) Check it out. Again: This is no joke.

8.) Parquet. *Real* parquet. And nothing else. Industrial parquet actually can easyly be cheaper than industrial wall-to-wall carpeting. Bug your Boss about it if it's not company policy. Maybe encourage your boss to join in on a little office-pimping spree. With the right tone of voice and mood you can get your entire departement to consider office interiors a little more.

9.) High Desk/Standing Desk. Somebody mentioned this allready. Really neat idea. We sit *all* day and that is *bad*. Space to run a few circles and a place to stand and work at is a very neat thing if you have the space to spare. Spec your PC casing to fit a standing desk if the need be - or add a second screen to your setup. You can get desks that have motors in them to lift them to standing height. N

Re:First investment

[ILongForDarkness]

No not at all ;) Actually the last three posts I got in reply mentioned unions, and fair enough. I read a article recently (can't remember where, though I subscribe to TechRepublic and the Code Project so I wouldn't be supprised if it was one of them) about this kind of thing. The arguement was that IT people want to be treated as "professionals" not lowly hourly workers, so are more likely to take a salary position, and put up with working 50+ hr weeks even though in most places even salary employees are entitled to get paid for their time if it is over 44hrs. Anyways, it was well reasoned, and does point out some of the silly things people in the field do.

I might be a rarity, I'm an hourly IT worker. I bill for my time if I get called back in, at least 4hrs plus travel expenses. My reasoning is: getting to work once a day I pay for, if you want me back you pay for it. So far my boss has lived with that. I'm a one of though, so have some leverage. Funny, the finance department said they didn't have enough work for a second IT guy, so instead pay me OT and travel expenses out the wazoo :) As for avoiding salary my reasoning is: if my first 40 hours was worth 75k to you, then my next 40 hours is worth at least another 75k to you. A factory gets a rush job they bill the customer more, and pay their employees extra. A factory machine goes down, they pay the millwrights OT to get it up and running asap. Same should go with IT. I don't mind putting the hours in, but I'll be damned before I'll burn my gas and spend my evening working for free.