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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."
Seriously, is not writing the acronym out some sort of geek badge to you? Learn how to write like a professional instead of a fucking child.
I've worked in IT my entire adult life and I have fucking acronyms.
You should probably get that checked out.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
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.
thats what he is trying to do. go here and read please. http://goo.gl/ys7yk
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Thank you, this confirms that the question is in fact as boring as it appears to be.
Otherwise your Discrete Interface Control Knob might fall off.
Right...he didn't spell it out once.
You must not have worked with many VARs or consultants before.
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
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.
/var (used to hold variable files such as logs, the mail and printer spools). Yep that's just one of the things I thought about as I'm in the process of doing a Clean install of Gentoo in a chroot on a Gentoo system. It's chroots all the way down
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
No, he's not trying to hire somebody who knows what they are doing.
He managed to convince them that he is that person, and now he's trying to get us tell him how to do his job for free.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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 >+