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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.
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.
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)...
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.
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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'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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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