Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Setting Up a System Integration Room At VAR?
o2binbuzios writes "Due to an office move, I have a chance to do a clean-sheet design for an integration room at a fairly large VAR ($100M+ ). I'm looking for some ideas or best practice to support 100-120 square meters (~50 x 30 ft). I'm particularly interested in ideas around efficient workflow, ways to manage cabling and electrical, and 'environmental' solutions that make it a pleasant place to work. There will be a central bench with 6-8 stations (3-4 per side) with engineers and techs who may be configuring stacks of up to 10 devices at a time that could range from servers, to network elements, to SAN & NAS devices and more. I've been looking for a paper that seems like it must exist — but I'm happy to gather good ideas one at a time or in bunches here on Slashdot."
If the company is that large and the room is important, hire someone who knows what they're doing for that sort of thing and doesn't need to use a lifeline.
Maybe I'm stupid. Value added re-seller? What the fuck is your question about?
timothy you're a moron.
I've worked in IT my entire adult life and I have fucking acronyms.
the only var that I know of is in Unix, a directory called /var and /var/run
never heard of SAN & NAS. can someone plz explain accronyms? i tried a google search, but no luck
So you're in charge of a $100m project, and you're asking random people on the internet for advice. God, I wish I was your boss.
Why don't you hire someone to do this work, instead of trying to get free labor from us simply because you demand it.
Jackass!!
why are they letting someone who doesn't even know the basics set up a 100 Million dollar VAR?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wait, a for-profit company wants free advice for this? Or are you the Bangalore consultant who shammed your way into this assignment with no actual skills or experience and now you want someone else to do the work for you for free? Very funny, but most pros in this business have seen this ruse before. Let him figure it out for himself.
Instead of going the easy way to trash you for being in charge of a 100m$ dollar project and not having any remote idea of what are you doing, I will give you some idea that you may find usefull.
Hire me for 0.5% of your budget for a year and I will manage your project and meet the stockholders expectations while you relax and collect your paychecks.
Let me know if you are interested.
easy in, easy access
if you want to cheat, copy an apple store
= 100 thousand? A 100 million would be $100MM, if done correctly.
It sounds like what you're trying to build is what we call a "rollout room".
Well, there's a few things -- first, you need to think vertical. Even just a couple people in a space that small can start to feel cramped. You want overhead space to run cables, power, hang lights, and have it open so equipment can be staged there and left in-place. You'll want KVMs, port duplicators, etc., with an eye on minimizing the number of peripherals in the room. The only thing that should be in the staging area besides the "box" is a power cable. I also suggest overhead for staging because it's less likely to be bumped or shoved off the end of a table, thus damaging the (yet unused!) equipment.
Second, you want aisles that can easily allow someone carrying equipment past someone who's standing. There also needs to be plenty of elbow room between workstations. Some engineers are thin. Others, are sorta round. You may at some point hire someone who has a wheelchair. Think of these things now, and try to maximize the amount of available walking/moving/standing space in the room. This ties in with "think vertical!" above.
A personal note -- Engineers are very picky about their own tools -- have heavy-duty rail-mounted drawers (or a small tool chest) with individual keys. They don't have to be big, and can be put at the table-ends. Even though you're creating a communal working area, tools are not communal, tools are private. Second, air conditioning, as much as you can put in there, but more importantly is air ventilation and sound-proofing on the walls, etc. Staging areas are loud. Loud enough you could be edging into OSHA territory and requiring ear protection. Also... a lot of computer people neglect personal hygiene. It's not a problem when they're living in a cube... but it's going to take your quality of life index way down when Joe shows up and smells like he hasn't showered in a week. Good ventilation goes a long way towards limiting the man-stench of a dozen dudes crammed into a confined space.
Lastly, lighting. I'm sure you'll be stuck with fluorescent lighting like every other corporate environment on the planet, but try to choose 'natural light' bulbs if you can swing it. Believe it or not, the color 'warmth' of a bulb can have a significant psychological impact on a workspace. And consider something other than pure white on the walls. Obviously, don't go retarded and throw pastels up... but go to a hospital and see how they paint their hallways and stuff; Use that as inspiration for creating your own open space. And lastly, on the topic of lighting -- you will want swing-arm spot-lights wherever equipment assembly will take place.
One more thing: If there's carpeting in the room, take it out. You need to eliminate static discharge. Everything should be grounded and there should be multiple signs indicating where to connect grounding straps, etc. Also, that elbow-room comment I made above? There's a practical reason for it too -- if someone bumps you while working on equipment, they can inadvertently transfer a static discharge onto the other person, and from there, onto the device.
OH! And make sure you have plenty of circuit breakers and UPS in the room -- new equipment has a much higher failure rate than equipment that's been in the field for a short time... and the most common thing to blow is a power supply. Isolate assembly and testing areas from staging areas (where imaging, etc., takes place) electrically. You will short things out.. don't let one device ruin your night.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Most folks I know don't want to sit next to noisy heat-generating equipment in a lab, in the uncomfortable workspaces that often accompany them.
Keep only lab gear in the lab, with enough workspace for the just the physical hands-on type of work that's sometimes required.
Invest in switched remotely manageable power strips, remote KVM/Serial., and layer 1 switches (e.g. http://www.mrv.com/tap/physical-layer/ ). SSH/RDP access to the various lab hosts for things like packet capture, traffic generation, test automation, etc. Hire a cable-monkey (no offence intended to cable monkeys) to plug everything in. Document everything very very well.
Then, outside of the lab itself, set up some number of comfortable workspaces in a quiet setting, multiple monitors, etc., for the folks that actually need hands-on.
Let everyone else access it remotely.
This problem has been hashed out many times. If you don't have access to IEEE Spectrum, try old VAR DOCs issues or search any of the bigger HE group archives.
If you're going to be integrating large racks of blades and storage systems you'll need a LOT of power and the needs will change from job to job so I seriously suggest you look at an overhead busway system. We use Starline, but there are a couple vendors out there. If you go Starline realize that the boxes often have a couple weeks leadtime (at least through our supplier) so buy 20% more of whatever flavors you think you'll use.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'll toss in some more suggestions:
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
I just got a firm foam anti static floor mat for my workstation, and it is the greatest money I have ever spent. Even standing for 20 minutes is greatly improved by something a little squishy under my feet.
If any person might be standing in some spot, put one on the floor.
As for software and digital copies of stuff, buy a big honkin NAS device and store everything in ONE PLACE. Just the fact that its on the same physical machine eliminates people's need to search anywhere else.
so.. to decode... the guy wants advice on building an assembly room for an equipment provider?
system integration in his speak = slapping some cards on some pc?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Teklinks?
There are people who do this every day. Use them. At the very least:
1.An interior designer/architect. They'll point out the obvious mistakes you'll make, (like doors which, when open, obstruct switches, plugs etc.), plus ensure you comply with local regulations.
2. A 'lean' process guy. They wil ensure you design the workplace with optimum safety, efficiency and ergonomics. For example, have you thought about material flow? Mistake proofing?
source: 2nd comment. http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3686937&cid=43551129
Hivemind harvest in progress..
You're embarassing yourself Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 since you posted that using your registered username by mistake (instead of your usual anonymous coward submissions by the 100's the past 2-3 months now on slashdot) giving away it's you spamming this forums almost constantly, just as you have in the post I just replied to.
I don't think what's best for the equipment is generally best for the staff or vice versa.I would divide the room into two areas with some soundproofing and ideally glass in between.
Make the equipment side a bunch of shelves on racks with modular cabling into the staff area. Have commonly used infrastructure in the racks (KVMs, DHCP servers, power distribution file servers for images etc.) Make sure that there are plenty of well labeled/colored cables available and a means to store them conveniently. The equipment area needs to anti-static and drink/food free and well lit. The staff area may need to be warmer than the equipment area (arguments seem to rage over this) and permit snacks and sodas, have more friendly lighting.
Depending on what you will be doing you may want to consider a third, more secure area for whenever you need to impress a customer with your ability to keep their stuff separate, I would at least plan that the equipment area might be sub-divided by a cage later.
Nullius in verba
I was the senior integration technician at a mid-large VAR. We processed about 12,000 custom systems annually comprised of HP, IBM, & the occasional Sun server.
In 2010 our division was purchased and moved across the country (I didn't move with it). I've got a lot of tips and even some photos of what our build rooms were like. We had a major uptick in volume in ~2008 and I was given a similar chance to do what you're doing now. We picked up a new blank warehouse and gutted offices to turn into build rooms. It was quite a fun project.
contact me at my spam address (my username@hotmail.com) or "friend" me on here and I'd be happy to chat about some of our lessons learned.I'll keep an eye on my junk bin for a day or two to see if I catch your notice.
Lots of good ideas here. But nobody mentions an isolation station.
Assume someone brings in a PC or laptop that is infected with something really horrible. If you connect it to your internal network, it might spread to your own PCs and servers. So - first stop is to the isolation station, where we can test it and see what's broken without any danger to our network. Our's has a "server" running in a VM that is effectively read-only. It contains all the service packs, patches and tools. We can kill it and relaunch it with zero danger to the next PC.
How do we know what is infected? We assume anything with an OS installed is infected.
Place nail here >+
I want to really achieve something here... but in order to do that, I need you to tell me exactly how. Please keep your phone nearby, as I'll be calling it frequently during the process.
I'm glad I am in a position to offer you this great opportunity.
thx.
Something tells me you're one of those kids who spent college begging people on forums to complete their homework, too?