Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Would You Include In a New Building?
First time accepted submitter weiserfireman writes "For the first time in our company's 60 year history, we are going to be building a new facility from scratch. We are a CNC Machine shop with 40 employees and 20 CNC machines, crammed into a 12,000 sq foot building. We are going to build a new 30,000 sq foot building. I am the only IT person. I support all the computer systems, as well as all the fire/security/phone systems. My Boss has asked for my input on what infrastructure to include in the new building to support current and future technology. 1st on my list is a telecommunications equipment room. Our current building doesn't have one. I have been researching this topic on the Internet, and I have a list of a lot of different things, all of them are nice, but I know I am going to have a limited budget. If you were in my shoes, what priorities what features would you design into the building?"
Secret passageways
Perhaps this is obvious, but its the very first thing that popped into my head. You might not need to install a lot of cabling to run what you have, relatively speaking, but you WILL need to install more later and you WILL wish you had installed bigger conduit. So, plan your current needs as being 1/3 to 1/2 capacity and leave plenty of room for more. It doesn't cost much more to install bigger/more conduit now, but it will cost TONS more to install it later. Your successors will praise you.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Running out of ethernet jacks after the fact is a damned pain, and the cost of putting in wires(unshockingly) rises once you have to punch through the wall and do a bunch of fishing to get them there.
Even if you are Embracing The Wireless Future, you'll want enough copper to support about twice as many APs as the vendor claims you'll need. If not, you'll want even more.
Unless you're building in an ice cap, you'll need a reliable and likely fairly powerful cooling system for your telecom/server room. You should have it spec'd into the building's system capacity with the proper ductwork installed up front. Retrofitting that sort of thing can be a pain down the road.
Other than that, have at it.
To go along with your telecom room, add a server room with good cooling. Additionally, have them put spare wiring conduits throughout the building, in which to run telecom and network cables. Make sure you have space for running more or different cables in the future.
Raised floor, oversized conduit to support expansion and/or upgrade, overestimate your power needs, etc. Build a wish list, and let /them/ tell you what they won't buy; you'll never know what they are willing to invest in until you ask.
There's nothing worse than being in a building where money was no object - for the machinary, but to hell with the staff. So at lunchtime you have to wander down to some dodgy joint to get some garbage for lunch because there's nothing else around and coffee comes curtesy of Mr Vend. Thanks, but I don't care how 733t the equipment is, I don't want to work somewhere like that again.
Most important items are a wiring and equipment closet and several dedicated wiring channels (at no more than 30% capacity) do you can more easily upgrade the wiring and infrastructure in the future. The easier and less costly it is to upgrade your wiring/fiber, the easier it will be to make upgrades. Make sure the equipment closet is climate controlled and has a good air filtration system, dust from your CNC operations is not nice to equipment, especially metallic dust.
As for what to put there now, I recommend Cat 6 cabling plus any specialized cabling that you currently require.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
1). Properly Secured Server Room
2). AC Unit dedicated to server room
3). Cat 6 Ethernet (2 jacks) for each desk/location
4). Fiber between floors, multiple cables
5). Secure locations to install Wireless Access Points
6). Video camera's with DVR storage for a week (cabling)
7). FOB key card access to everything (keys suck)
8). IT Storage space for boxes, spare equipment, etc.
9). Proper kitchen for coffee
I would suggest that a secure wireless strategy would be better
love is just extroverted narcissism
Have gnu, will travel.
Lots and lots of cable channels. It will save you oodles of time and effort if you have prebuilt passageways to run cabling than it is to try and snake through ceilings. Not to mention it looks neater and is easier to trace.
Take a systematic approach to labeling and documenting where every cable goes and what it connects to. You might be the only person now, but at some point you won't be there OR, as unbelievable as it sounds, someone else may be hired to work with you.
As for a closet, in some of our buildings that is literally what we have; closets where the racks are. If you have to go that route, make sure you leave yourself enough room to do things without running into the walls or having to slide your hand through a slit not much bigger than an orange. Lighting is also helpful as is airflow.
Storage. All those cables, extra switches, parts and whatnot take up more space than people realize. Something that can be secured. Standard metal shelves with labeling for everything will do the job nicely.
Finally, if you can manage it, some dark, twisting tunnels which look all alike.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
On my required list would be a separate dedicated A/C system for your equipment room. Too often computer/telephone rooms are connected to whatever A/C system is convenient which leads to problems -- One of my horror stories was management turning off the A/C in the lunch room which had been running 24x7 to save energy, little did they know that the lunch room A/C was shared by the computer room on the other side of the wall.... :-(
Rule number one: Don't skimp on network drops. It's easier and cheaper to install them when you're building/finishing a facility than to try to go back later and re-run extra data lines. Ideally, plan twice as many as you think you need. Barring that, drop at least one more than you think you need in each location. The spare can be used for when you buy new equipment, add a printer, phone, etc..
Fire related equipment should be on its own separate network. Not a VLAN, it's own actual network. I've seen facilities grow, that were small in the beginning and ran fire on the same physical network as regular data. Regular data needs grew, and despite QoS settings, the fire system started getting starved for network traffic and the fire controllers were reading that they list contact with remote sensors, which triggers an alarm. Once the link is re-established a few seconds later, the alarm resets. Then a little later, you get another false alarm because it missed a check-in from a sensor.
Be generous with power drops. CNC equipment will likely need their own power, but be thoughtful about where you'll have power for various printers or workstations, anything that might need a dedicated circuit, in case a CNC were to cause a circuit breaker to trip. When you have a Server/Telecomm room, make sure it's big enough to suppor both the network rack, a telecom rack and a server rack or two. Check and double-check that you have dedicated circuits to the room for each rack you're planning to run.
Be generous with air flow in the Server/Telecomm room. It will generate more heat than you expect. Plan on it having its own, dedicated AC system.
Backup Power, plan to have it. If your phones are IP-based, you want to be able to have power for them during an outage, as well as your fire system. An onsite backup generator would be very nice. If you can't swing that, be sure to have, check, test and keep working, a good set of UPS devices to provide power during an outage.
I know you have a limited budget, but shoot for the moon, don't cut corners where you don't have to. Doing it right will serve the organization for years to come, even after you retire or move on...or have to hire more IT folks!
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Security for the infrastructure room.. (I don't care if it's a closet or a multimillion dollar server room..) Solid core, fire rated doors with appropriate locks. (Amazing how many businesses don't have the minimum there!)
As someone else said, conduit and wiring ability to expand over time. If someone wants to run 1" conduit, double it to 2" or 3". In the future there will be some new technology and it's almost impossible to ever remove old wiring, but adding new will be much easier.
Climate control -- note I didn't say air conditioning. For the best results, the room should have the ability to have it's own climate control. This may mean air cleaners (if fresh air is used for heating/cooling), air conditioning unit, etc. Don't rely on the building system, because as technology changes the heating/cooling requirements of the technology will change.
A space twice the size you need.. Equipment is always changing in size.. both bigger and smaller, as are the company needs.. room to grow is a good thing!
Finally power.. the room should have it's own dedicated power feed, that can easily be managed by a generator, power backup unit, etc.. even if you don't need those things today, planning ahead for them makes it a whole lot cheaper if you do ever need them. Again relying on building wide power is fine for a while.. but it's much better to have the ability for dedicated stuff in the IT room.
We are looking at moving to a facility double the size of ours. My hit list is:
- 10x10 server room. All wiring for phones and network will land there
- CAT 5E or Cat 6 cabling throughout for phone and data
- Dropping the old nortel phones for VOIP (internal only) phones. Easier to configure and has tones more features
- 4 drops in every office (You never know when they'll need it and they'll try to cramp 2 people in there
- Roaming wireless AP through the plant (we will be going to 60000 sqft so I have 6 of them)
I'm not going to talk about electrical and other facilities since electricians have a good handle on what companies need today (usually 2 double outlets per room and 20amp circuit for microwaves in lunch room)...
A ZPM for independant power supply
Your needs will depend on, among other things, your layout. Is it a shop/front office setup, a series of small rooms, or just one big open area? Depending on what the physical setup of the building (and computers/phones), a single distribution frame may not be appropriate. Considering the size of the building, I would assume that, in addition to your main distribution frame, at least one IDF (independent distribution frame, i.e. "small telecom closet") would be necessary to overcome the attenuation limitations of Ethernet cabling (assuming this isn't a end-to-end fiber shop, a situtation which would provide many different questions and answers).
Assuming that the cable is run in anything other than under-floor conduit, talk to your architect about how and where the cable raceway will be placed. It's been my experience that most architects don't take cable installation concerns into account when designing floorplans, and thus you often end up with situations where it is next-to-if-not-impossible to get a new cable down a certain length of run, because the designer placed the raceway too damn close to HVAC equipment, or it runs blind 30' up a column with no access port, or any of at least a dozen other stupid situation's I've been in because nobody thought discussing layout was worth the time.
What else, what else... Well, you'll probably want to have some 220 and/or 440 circuits brought into your distribution frames, just in case you need that sort of power at a later date (if you don't already now) - I know the Cisco Catalyst series of routers require at least 1 220v Twist-Loc connection for power, 2 with redundant power supplies.
That's about all the advice I can think of to give, considering the limited information you've provided. Still, useful stuff.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Unless you are in a wildly electrically hostile environment
He's in a machine shop. Only thing worse is a arc welding plant. Do yourself a favor and run fiber to every machine, not every desktop. In ye olden days at the plant I had to run that new-fangled cat-5 thru roof trusses spaced many feet between power conduits just to keep interference down. We didn't even bother trying to set up a networked PC in the welding area. All that plant cat-5 was replaced with fiber as budget permitted. Assuming you terminate your own SC/ST (or whatever) connectors, the main cost is a couple hundred bucks for the ethernet to fiber converters.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So that employees can cycle or run/walk to work, or at lunch and not stink up the place. Fit employees are cheaper on the health-care front and happier.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Somebody's going to mod me down, but I'm dead serious. This is the second time a company I worked for has moved to a new location with no storage space for anything at all -- HR documents, financial documents, machinery (both active and surplus), office supplies, even employee's coats. Let me assure you how professional it looks to have random file cabinets placed all over what are supposed to be ADA-compliant-width hallways. </sarc>
Foosball table
Beer vending machine.
Problem solved: Beer-vending Foosball table!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'd suggest the most important things will be power for the server room (incl UPS & backup generator, scaled to your runtime needs for orderly shutdown of servers in case of an extended outage) and run conduits/wiring shelves to enable the easy stringing of fiber/copper in the future.
I'd also suggest making sure the building is wifi/wireless friendly - if all interior walls are metal, for example, you may need an ungodly number of APs to enable wireless networking.
As for the server room, I'd think real hard about the size room you think you'll need, then double it. This is your chance to ensure you have enough room for everything now, and while virtualization is all the rage, I wouldn't use that to justify skimping on space. You'll want romm for the equipment, systems you are working on, spare parts, and perhaps space for your desk (preferably with a door between you and the server to cut down on noise).
Run wiring trays in the server room - run the wires overhead, not under raised floor.
Finally, don't forget cooling - as servers become denser and denser, their heat output doesn't shrink in my experience. Also, not familiar with CNC shops, but air filtration for the server room might also be in order.
Ken
I've been down this road a few times - install separate ductwork leading in and out of the server/telco room (with the intakes on the opposite side of the building from your other ductwork) if you can possibly afford it.
Dirt and machine oil and metal filings can move surprising distances. Separate HVAC to the server room works far better than extra filters which just get clogged.
Also, like others have said - conduit for data lines to every workstation. Potentially cheaper than fiber (if you do it right the first time) and more durable and future-proof.
Dual Cat6 sockets on each desk
You forgot to mention why, the answer is one is the production network and one is the "IT" cubie network. Its OK to put a firewall between them, but it would be a career ending incident if a receptionist clicked on an exciting "comet cursor" pop up ad or installed a toolbar or whatever and suddenly all 40 machines grind to a halt, or even worse, crash (literally). At a billable rate of $100/hr per machine this could get expensive, and that's before the mfgr rep has to come on site individually decontaminate each CNC machine controller.
I've never worked at a employer who didn't have separate air gapped IT and production networks, but being a small place maybe you grew up different.
Pretty much everywhere I've worked, as you upgrade the "main IT computer" the old one gets wiped, sanitized, and reinstalled as the "new" production network box, with a nice air gap between the networks. So it doesn't really cost anything to dual machine dual network every applicable station.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
AS in dedicated AC, dedicated power and dedicated power backup systems. None of this "use storage closet 1A" crap with no AC and no real power.
Get them to run 4 dedicated 20 amp circuits into that closet. a dedicated AC unit and have them insulate all the walls to keep noise down and cooling efficient. a nice sealing steel door as well to keep the sound from intruding into the office space as well.
Oh and if you need 3 racks in there, ask for 6 racks of space. I hate the "we made the room wide enough for 3 racks"... how am I supposed to get to the back of them?
Lastly, assume the contractor and architect are morons. you must spell out your needs exactly. as in "IT closet is 42.5 inches wide by 77.341 inches long with a 92 inch ceiling clearance. Fiberglass batting in all walls and ceiling with 6 inch conduits leaving the room (specify 2X the size of any wiring conduit to ANY location.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A dedicated server/telco room is a must. Room size determination is simple as taking our current rack number and multiple by two. Add 3' ft in the back and 6' in the front. I would also install a dedicated electrical panel. It makes adds/moves/changes much easier later. Also I would hammer on the electrical contractor to insure there is a good ground to the panel. This will mitigate a ton of "transient" problems later. I would also install four 2" conduits to a outside pull box for telco access. That way the local telcos don't tear up your new building trying to bring service in. It also forces the demarc to be inside your server room which makes issues easier to deal with later. Make sure one side of your wall has 3/4" ply/OSB to act as a peg board. A full 4x8 sheet is good enough. Also I would speak with the fire contractor about installing a dry system inside your server room. That way the sprinklers don't ruin your expensive equipment. I would also go for a dedicated AC unit. To size take your current BTU needs and multiple by two. I would also install a solid door with a punch key keypad. You can get inexpensive ones at local hardware store. Lastly since you guys are most likely a warehouse style building so I would not run conduit unless I had too. I would use wire troughs or hangers with shielded CAT6 cable. That way you don't trap yourself later with conduit. If you want to hide the cables then paint them. There are a bunch more suggestions but those are the big ones.
~^\-/^|-|^\-/^~ May the force be with me!
In a machine shop?
The problem is not the security, the issue is the electrical interference and the BIG METAL MACHINES.
Unless you are in a wildly electrically hostile environment, or forsee a need for 10GbE to the desktop, why bother?
Just the hostile environment. 10GbE will be copper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-gigabit_Ethernet#10GBASE-T It needs Cat6A for full runs, and Cat6 for short runs.
Location is the Treasure Valley in Idaho, climate is pretty mild, but we are in the 100 year flood plain. The new facility will be next door to our current facility. We are in the city limits of a small town and do have hydrant access.
We do work with Titanium sometimes, which requires us to maintain Class D extinguishers. Because I am a Volunteer Fireman in a neighboring town, I happen to be a Fire Code Official for the State Fire Marshal's office. Which is why, my boss asks me for recommendations on what we are needing on the fire side too. I have already made a couple calls to alarm and sprinkler people for their recommendations.
We do some DoD work. At a minimum, I am going to request that all the doors be standardized to accept an access control system, in the future, if I can't it included in the original project. That will include conduit to support the wiring.
AC system seperate from the plant for the Server and Telecommunications Equipment room isn't something that I had thought of, but it is a great idea. I already told the boss that we might want better exhaust fans in one section because of the oil cooled machines there. They create a nice oily mists that really can gunk up equipment. It is a lot better than it used to be when we used Cam driven machines. But is still nasty.
Yeah, the non-obvious stuff is the trick here. I am trying to really future proof the infrastructure so people will find the building useful well into the future.
Dont forget you also need AC in the dead of winter. So if you DONT have a dedicated AC unit in the room, you will find it VERY hostile in the room when your shared cooling source goes from cool to heat, and instead of it removing heat from the room, it dumps more in. o_O
Also, dont skimp on a clean agent fire supression system. the last thing you want is a water based sprinkler system in the room flooding the equipment with water when a fire starts. If you have a fire and you have a water based system, the equipment is a total write-off. If its protected by a clean agent system, anything not touched by the fire/heat will be fine. so if you have a trashcan in the room and somebody accidentally puts a cigarette into it, the sprinkler system would destroy the equipment across the room even though it was nowhere near the flames. If a clean agent system fires, you can be in the room again within hours and the equipment is fine.
here is a cool example. Dated, but cool. This shows a real world demo of a fire in a data room and what happens when both types of suppression systems go off.
The fun starts at about the 30 second mark.
http://youtu.be/0WelmCXtsyI
You do realize that wireless can be made secure much easier than ethernet right?
You do realise that hundreds of unshielded electrical motors inside what is for all practical purposes a giant Faraday cage might cause some small amount of interference, don't you? It is not security. It is signal to NOISE!
While a food service contract might be overkill, and I'm sure there are lawyer firms(as opposed to industrial) that have catering every day, as long as we're getting away from IT recommendations, I'd say that a good breakroom with a 'full' kitchen isn't 'that' expensive and can be really nice. Add a grill outside and you can have company events.
Oh yeah, and you'll probably have it because it's an industrial company, but non-emergency showers/lockerroom.
Back on IT - given the size I'd want the 'comm closet' to be big enough for both wires and a server rack. At 40 employees, 1 rack for wiring and 1 rack for servers and other equipment should be fine. Go with seperate ducting, along with provisions for extra filtering/positive pressure(to keep the machining stuff OUT). Ductless is an option, but I'm not sure how good the filtering on those can be, plus it can be tough to do positive pressure.
In the rest of the building - CONDUIT!!! Oversized is best. I'd go with metallic for the shielding. Not knowing the dimensions I don't know if you can reach all the machines with 1 comm closet without going to fiber, but that's an option, though it's my understanding that desktop fiber NICS are getting pricy and hard to find.
I don't read AC A human right
UPS / UPS and more ups - everything upsed - main routers, servers, switches and telephone systems [ though if you are using IP telephony up the number of sockets at each desk]
CNC machines, industrial area? I'd look into putting a power conditioner before the UPS. Determine your uptime requirements - how long will the servers take to shut down and such, and look into a 'room UPS'. Now, as an industrial company I doubt you'll 'need' to be up if you're without power for an extended period of time(I doubt the CNC machines will be running in that case), but it's something to think about.
I don't read AC A human right
Planning for the future is the key, and equally key is keeping it SIMPLE.
Dropped ceilings make it much easier to run cable later. Your HVAC guy will want to run his duct work down the center of the hall, don't let him. During construction it's only slightly harder for him to run it over the offices. Run a tray over the hall for data cabling. Down the road when you need drops to a remodeled office or conference room you can run them in the hall without interrupting all the people working at their desks along the way.
Similarly, a couple of 4" conduits to the roof, basement, or other areas that seem like "they will never need cabling" will pay huge dividends down the road when just one thing needs to be installed in those locations, and it will. This is especially true for non-computer IT stuff; security cameras can be very difficult to install/cable if not thought about ahead of time. Things like curtesy phones are rarely properly planned.
It does work; I've done it. The nice part is that you can reconfigure a work cell without having to rerun cables. What I'm wondering is if any of his machines are still on RS-232, in which case you need to either get special wireless boxes or run serial cable.
I the only guy as well for a manufacturing company about that size, and probably like you, I wear a lot of hats besides being IT.
I dream of the day we build from scratch, but we will probably always keep adding on and on. I just re-ran all of our wire last year, went to VOIP, bought out first racks (we were using tables before) etc.
If I could do it from scratch, I would
1) Get your own room
2)Get that room it's own AC, and seal it off as much as possible.
3) Do what you can to get a non-water fire-suppression system, though it could add a lot of cost
4) Do what you can to have a nice room with a raised floor (so you can put wire under it) and it's own ceiling. It depends on where you are, but the danger of winds/tornadoes for us is more probable than fire. We had a CNC shop down the road from us get their roof peeled off like a tin-can from straight line winds not too long ago. Water soaked everything in the upstairs office areas.
5) Obviously use conduit when possible, and Cat6 x2 to as many places as you can. Wire and keystone jacks are cheap. Go crazy with them - you don't have to plug them all in right now.
6) If you don't have them now, one of these days your boss/owner/VP is going to come in and tell you that you need to put in security cameras, TV announcement screens, one of those stupid "Watchfire" signs outside, or something else random and hard to wire for. It'll happen. Run cable (or make accessible) places you might want to be in the future, and remember that you will want some nice conduit access outside. That cable TV/PRI/Fiber connection might come from any direction. Give yourself options and put conduit in places that can be tunneled to from the outside, preferable in all sides of the building. If everything is from scratch, put conduit under the parking lot!
7) Reserve your spot for future racks, even if you don't need them now. Eventually you might want some switches in a closet, or a rack in the far corner of the building. It doesn't have to be much, but see if you can get some nice conduit run to some places where you could put a small rack to hold some switches and patch panels. It'll probably be 60 years or more before you move again, and you or the next guy will eventually be tasked with adding something new.
Oh yeah, document everything and make it super easy to understand. Label your cables using something easy, like self-laminating tabs and a sharpie marker, on top of just numbering them. A number and cross-reference is good, but there's no reason it can't also say "To SW Corner." We also used different color cables for different systems. Between floors are purple, data is blue, telephone-only are green, fiber to outside buildings are orange, inside fiber is blue, etc.
It won't be too bad to do yourself as long as you have help running cables and conduit. See if you can visit some other factories/businesses in town and get an idea of what their spaces look like.
I do infrastructure for a large organization.
You need:
Telecommunications closets within 250' of every edge of the building where there is any possibility that equipment could be placed, as total cable length can be 328', and you have to account for patch cables and workstation/equipment cables, as well as elevation changes and routing. These TCs need their own air conditioning independent of the rest of the building and need to be keyed so that only a very select group of staff can go in. Do not use wall-mount enclosures if you can avoid it. Run conditioned power to the TCs. It's your call if you have battery backups in each TC or a big one at the supply for them, but electrically isolate them from the floor. Probably a good idea to have the AC units on a battery backup too.
Conduit, Conduit, Conduit. Color code it and label it. For trunk runs have at least two sets, one for copper, one for fiber, and just do them in 4". For distribution, don't go smaller than 1", and probably still best to have two runs. Remember, no low voltage and high voltage in the same conduit, and best practice to not put fiber and copper in the same conduit in order to protect the fiber as changes are necessary.
Talk to the designer for equipment layout. You'll want to put junction boxes wherever you'll need to bring conduit down from the ceiling, even if they're just plugged at the moment. You can add the drop and outlet later, but if you don't put the jbox in, it's a big PITA.
You do not need to string all of the cable for all of the conduit up front, but you should run at least a twelve-strand fiber between all of your TCs, and probably run one of each of single mode and multi mode. You should probably also run a 25 pair copper for phones.
You should look into STP or S/FTP instead of UTP for the copper. Learn how to ground it right and make sure that the contractors follow the specs. Do not use Cat5e, use at least 6, preferably 6a. Commscope makes a thin 6a if you're worried about bend radii and number of cables in a conduit.
When you're installing conduit, allow for a few places for later expansion for wireless. It may sound strange, but leaving a double-gang box with a reducer and a metal plate at the end of a short 1" conduit stubbing off of your trunk can be handy if down the road it's needed.
Pay attention to grounding and bonding.
Devise a labelling scheme. We use MDF as A, IDFs B - whatever. Then patch panel position number, then type. So, A-021D would be an ethernet (data) port, 21st on the patch panel, in the MDF. B-047V would be a phone (voice) port, 47th pair, in IDF-B. You could use F for fiber, or if running single and multi mode, S or M.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you can't get into the meetings, you must get a data plan into the architectural drawings.
I've done this 3 times at work with new buildings or renovations and additions to new buildings. Each time I was only asked as an afterthought, and things got screwed up or left out without my knowledge. In no case did our architects give a moment's thought to data drop locations or cable paths, and if it's not printed on some layer of the drawings, it is not in the plans. It sucks to have to do 3x walk-throughs with the cable installers, scribbling on a copy of the plans, only to have to redo it every time the plans are revised. In the end the electricians will just put the wall boxes wherever they please because your scribbles never make it back to the printed plans, so your network installers will have to cut in their own boxes, raising your installation costs.
In one building that was constructed about 10 years ago, the server room was moved and the dedicated air conditioning disappeared in the process. That caused the email server crash and corrupted its storage one June weekend when the Buildings and Grounds Manager decided to turn off the AC to save power. Also in the change, the width of the server room shrank by 18 inches, making it impossible to fit a standard server cabinet. The first floor in this building is pretty easy to network, except for the fact that the in-floor conduit grid for the library was hacked out of the plans without my knowledge, but the second floor is a real trial. Wiring passing down the corridor has to pass through about 20' of an indoor soffit with no conduit and no access except from small hatches at each end. It just has J-hooks and a pull-string, and the pull-string broke.
In one building added onto about 10 years ago there is no network closet. The IDF is a cabinet perched above a slop sink. No disaster's yet, but I'm waiting for the day when someone splashes water into the power outlet.
In another building offices on sides are separated by masonry walls floor to cieling (no drop ceiling) and a gymnasium and workout room. The only conduits connecting the 2 sides are 3, 1" underground runs from the data/sports equipment closet to a locker room in the far corner of the building, or a long, serpentine nest of conduits around the gym ceiling. The building was renovated about 4 years ago when the workout room and additional office was added. They could have added a simple 4" or so conduit through the workout room. Instead, I'm using the underground conduits, making the data runs about 100 feet longer than they need to be and a lot more trouble than they need to be. The underground cat 5e cables have not shorted out yet, but it's just
Really if you are on a budget, the important part is that you run a few multistrand bundles anywhere that it will be a pain to rip into the walls to run it again later, and run it along with the copper so that you don't have to pay for the manpower all over again. Make sure there is plenty of service loop. The jacks and end runs can come later on an as-needed basis. Most of the cost is always in the manpower, not the cabling, so think who will have to do what to realize fiber to a given point, and how much that might disrupt operations, and preinstall anywhere where it would be tricky to do after the fact. Try to avoid situations where you'll need splicing, but for in-building use you don't usually have to worry about having too many intermediary patch panels.
Someone had to do it.
> Do yourself a favor and run fiber to every machine, not every desktop
Could you please elaborate on this? How would you get fiber to every machine?
The machines out on the factory floor pretty much have to run aerial along the roof trusses because in a big enough plant there are machines in the middle of the factory floor and buried conduit would fill with nasties like water and machine coolant. So you're juggling space with the power and often compressed air from the ceiling.
The desktops don't matter because they're on the same probably fairly clean AC power line with the same ground point and probably low neutral currents. So just wire like any old cubie-land. The machines out on the floor, however, do not have such clean power and they really need fiber.
As for getting the fiber to each machine, my advice is innerduct it. Well, run the numbers first. At one time it was cheaper to buy tough innerduct and wimpy indoor fiber, than it was to buy tough outdoor rated fiber and skip the duct. Maybe not now. As for the machine itself that was handled by plant maintenance... tell them to mount a small rack enclosure on the headstock side of the 80 foot lathe or the 20x20 plasma table control station or whatever and they'd just do it for me / us. The original poster is probably going to be stuck doing this by himself. This is sometimes challenging to not get in the way or create an osha violation somehow (you're blocking access to the first aid kit! You need 4 feet wide walkways in case the fire dept needs the jaws of life! etc)
Whatever you do, lock your stuff on the floor or every time the plasma cutter pops a breaker they're going to write in a procedure for minimum wage drones to reboot your stuff or otherwise mess around with it, if they can get access to it "just in case". Or they'll start storing their lunch in the cabinet or whatever and attract mice. Or they'll leave the door open and a passing forklift will rip the whole box off the milling center (whooops). Don't need fancy milspec locks just keep the casual interloper out.
Maybe the TLDR is just parallel the air line and power line installation?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
All the better to introduce the Stuxnet Virus.
You do realize that wireless can be made secure much easier than ethernet right?
You do realise that hundreds of unshielded electrical motors ... It is not security. It is signal to NOISE!
You do realize that the GP was replying to someone who claimed a wireless network was more likely to introduce the Stuxnet Virus, right?
Shielded cat 5e STP cable works great in noisy environments it costs about $0.11 a foot and many switches and routers are compatible with STP requirements. Just make sure the cable has foil over each pair and a braid around all the cables with a darin wire for the best protection. You can get fiber spools for $0.20 a foot but you will have to make all the connectors yourself and doing them well is critical. If you are going to go with fiber and have no experience crimping it's probably better to buy precut cables and pay about $1 per foot but you can save a lot if you have fiber experience.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
He's in a machine shop. Only thing worse is a arc welding plant.
Really?
Most machine shops do not induce a lot of electrical noise that would not be totally managed by basic metal conduit.
Most automated milling machines are using basic industrial CPUs on 70s technology circuit board, and are totally unbothered
by the electrical interference.
Unless there is a lot of arc welding, you really only have electrical motor noise, which is not that big of a problem.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
And a shark tank. And a big sign that says "Out of Order Do NOT Use"
No, 10GbE between switches. From there, 1GbE between the switch and the computer.
By your logic, highways should also have a speed of 35mph like secondary roads and be a single lane each way, since there's no point in making the roads 2 lanes each way with a 65mph speed limit since your neighborhood roads are only 35mph. So what happens when 3 devices on switch A must talk to a device on switch B (say the clients to the server?)
If you have 1GbE adapters in the 3 devices and run Cat5e or Cat6 between the devices and switch A, then each device could do 1GbE. Now if you only run a 1GbE link between switch A and switch B, well that 1GbE link is being split 3 ways (plus any overhead), so the 1GbE link between the 3 devices and the switch become pointless. On the other hand, if you do it properly, and make a 10GbE link between switch A and switch B, you could (in theory but not in practice) have 10 devices transferring one directions at the same time and still maintain the full speed they could achieve (and on a full-duplex setup you could have about 8 or so transferring one direction and 8 or so transferring the other direction at about full speed).
Now if you have a lot of large CAD files or whatever, the speed would be welcomed. And honestly, you can pick up quality GigE equipment for a good price (10GbE switches are a bit more, but can still be found for a decent price online and are name brand)
Plus as others said, the fiber isn't prone to noise interference like Cat cable is... and it NEVER hurts to plan ahead. Heck, in my building here on campus we replaced all the patch cables that run between the patch panel and the switches with Cat 6, although none of the machines do 10GbE over copper. Also, all the runs from the wall jack to the equipment is Cat 6 which we switched as we fixed, moved, replaced, or re-imaged the equipment. Again, there's no need for a network printer to be connected from the switch to the patch panel, up to the wall jack and out to the machine.. but it's better for it to be there for when something does come along that can use it (and it's all already in place) than to have put say Cat 5e only to have to replace it a few years down the road.
Unless you are in a wildly electrically hostile environment, or forsee a need for 10GbE to the desktop, why bother?
"640K ought to be enough for anybody", right?
It's axiomatic that the pulling of cable is typically much more expensive than the cable itself, so when you have the opportunity to do so, future-proof as much as possible. Pull the fastest backbones you can, and if the budget allows, pull a couple of different types.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
on a full-duplex setup you could have about 8 or so transferring one direction and 8 or so transferring the other direction at about full speed
I can't be bothered to look up the spec at the moment or even look for a link, but I thought half-duplex was dropped from all the 1GE specs. Even 1GE-BX (gigE over a single fiber, not a pair) is full duplex. And I can't recall having seen a 100 Mbps switch/hub incapable of full duplex, by the time 100 Mbps was getting the push, everyone moved on to switches from hubs.
Wire for fiber. Why? Because unlike cat-3, cat-5, cat-6, etc. You run once, and upgrade with a quick (if not cheap) upgrade of the optics on the ends. I've put 10 Gbps over fiber installed for 100 Mbps without issue. And right now, where I work, there is a project underway to put 400+ Gbps over fiber that was installed for 155 Mbps 10+ years ago.
Learn to love Alaska
Standard Ethernet is physically secure. You do realize that 802.1x, the basis for wireless security, was invented for wired Ethernet? And I deployed it about 10 years before it was first available for wireless networks. I don't need to encrypt every frame if I steer frames only to their destination and everyone on the network is authenticated. Wireless, it's better than wired because it's almost 20 years behind wired security such that people lazy with ethernet will have a much much cheaper unencrypted install that still more secure than wireless.
Learn to love Alaska
Oh, and one thing I'd add to an otherwise great post.
Draw a map/diagram and give copies to everyone who might ever need it. Keep it updated with any adds/moves/changes. There's no point to a great labeling scheme if nobody knows what it means when you, the *only* IT guy, leaves.
Learn to love Alaska
To this I would add that you need to plan for your access control, security video and alarm system as well. The access control system will need wall space to hang one or more enclosures for controllers and power supplies. I would leave about 4 square feet for every two doors at least, 6 would be better. There will need to be cable paths from the enclosures to the doors, so get your security contractor involved early, because pulling cable through a completed wall is an order of magnitude more expensive than when it's still open.
Your security contractor should be able to look at the plans and tell you where cameras will be needed (if they can't get a new contractor). Interior cameras can be POE if they're under 100 meters from a switch (that's 100 meters of cable path, not straight line, remember). Exterior cameras will need a heater and blower for the dome, which will require 24 volt power. Make sure that there is wall space somewhere appropriate to mount the power supply enclosure. Think about non-standard location that you might want cameras, such as tool bins, flammable liquid storage, or dangerous equipment.
Put a panic button under the receptionist's desk, and make sure they have access to an exterior camera with a view of the main entry. They're the ones most likely to see a disgruntled ex-employee or someone's irate ex-spouse showing up with a gun. Make sure that the panic button not only generates an alarm somewhere useful (a bunch of mechanics running in carrying wrenches and welding tools will scare the crap out of most attackers), but that it also locks the exterior doors. Hopefully the locked door will keep an armed person out, but even if they're already inside when the button is pushed you don't want innocents walking into that type of situation.
Run a POTS line for the alarm panel. It needs to be able to dial out to the alarm company, and is often forgotten. Remember as well the cable path from the alarm panel to wherever the arming keypad or reader is located. If you put it in the same room as the access control panel you should be fine. Six square feet of wall space should be adequate to mount it and its power supply.
Make sure that the access control system, alarm system and fire system are all on UPS circuits. Make sure that your UPS and fire system, as well as thermometers in the data center and MDF, report their status to the alarm panel and the access control system. In your type of operation any eye wash stations and first aid boxes should also raise alarms so that anyone injured can be attended to.
Oh, and add a bicycle lock up site that's out of the rain.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin