[OPLINTECH] Ideas for server room & technology work area (esp. server room size)?

[Mann, James H.]

GCPL's server room is pretty simple and old fashioned since it's been around for 20 years or so.
There is a 12x8 operator's office with a desk, computer work station, cable TV, and storage. This used to be where my part-time and night operators worked.
The computer room is about 12x20 with a secure entry door, whole room UPS, raised floor with about 20 power whips. In the last few years we have been going to rack mounted equipment so the room is fairly sparsely furnished. On one wall we have the UPS, a communication rack with the phone system and various network routers. We're on the second floor so fiber and some data comes up through the floor. We have a small desk that gets used mostly by the phone guy and the Cisco guy. There is a mostly empty bread rack on the back wall where we keep a printer for the security system and the roadrunner modem. The other wall has 3 racks (one generic and 2 Dell) that house most of our servers, we have a 8 foot workstation like you see in the catalogs that used to hold our tower servers which now has 2 towers. Cat 5 cables go under the floor and connect to a patch panel which connects to an IP KVM. The entry wall has the typical window and a desk that's currently housing "Ubuntu world" which is basically 4 old public computers, an old KVM and a monitor.
The room has 2 HVAC units and is cooled to 68 degrees with an alarm set for 80 degrees.
As you start to rack up and build up you end up with a lot of free space and I think we have had up to 30 new computers and monitors in there at one time.
If I were doing it today I could do the same thing in a long narrow space and use the extra floor space for desks and storage. 
Things I'd recommend:
1. A whole room UPS
2. Adequate HVAC
3 Easily accessible power
4. Easily accessible cable runs and good access from the room back to the DMark.
5 Some kind of logical cable flow...if the DMark is on the right than start with the com rack and move to the server racks in a logical order.

I have a friend who has a server room that is maybe 6x20 and there is room to work both in front and behind the racks.

BTW: For those of you not old like me, someone from IBM or MIT was once asked about the glass windowed computer rooms and men in white coats and his response was that "it was so the people who were paying the bills could see what they were buying."

Jim Mann
Technology Coordinator
Greene County Public Library
76 E. Market St.
Xenia Ohio 45385
(937)352-4000 x1210
mailto: jmann at gcpl.lib.oh.us
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." - Mario Andretti.

-----Original Message-----
From: oplintech-bounces at oplin.org [mailto:oplintech-bounces at oplin.org] On Behalf Of Chad Neeper
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:24 PM
To: oplintech at oplin.org
Subject: Re: [OPLINTECH] Ideas for server room & technology work area (esp. server room size)?

Maybe overkill, but nobody has mentioned a raised floor yet. If you're dealing with a lot of devices/cables, a raised, anti-static floor would permit you to easily route cables down and out of the way. The electric outlets could be down there out of the way too. Not right for all situations, but might be useful to you.

Chad

-----------------------
Chad Neeper
Senior Systems Engineer

Level 9 Networks
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

--   Full LAN/WAN consulting services   --
-- Specialized in libraries and schools --



Phil Shirley wrote:
> As part of the renovation of the main floor of our library, the 
> technology department will be moved to the lower level (ok, "basement").
>   This will include office space for two full-time people, storage, 
> and the server room.  I've looked at lots of other libraries' server 
> rooms in touring their buildings, but it's a different thing to have 
> to come up with one myself.  Below are some of my thoughts; I would 
> appreciate anyone's input on this.
>
> The most important thing we need to decide now is the major 
> requirements
> - size and basic layout of the rooms (but comments about anything else 
> would also be appreciated).  Do you think 10 x 14 feet would be good 
> for our server room?  Details below.
>
> Server room: Right now we don't have a real server room and don't have 
> racks for our equipment or anything like that.  To give you an idea of 
> our size, we have:
> Rack-mount:
> - About 80 data drops
> - 3 rack-mount servers
> - 7 pieces of rack-mountable network equipment (switches, etc.)
> - 1 rack-mount UPS & 1 rack-mount tape drive
> - possibly the terminations of about 30 phone lines
>
> Other:
> - 3 mini-tower PC workstations
> - 1 tower Dell PowerEdge (2' deep)
> - 2 free-standing UPSs
> - 2 modems and a small tape drive
> - possibly a wall-mounted phone system
> - 1 KVM switch for everything, with 1 monitor, keyboard, & mouse
>
> We will also have an air conditioner.
>
> I'm thinking that all of this would fit in at most 2 tall racks plus a 
> 4-foot "LAN Station" like this one:
> http://www.server-rack-online.com/lan-racks.html
>
> That would be just over 7 feet long if you put it all side-by-side.  I 
> think we would want plenty of space on all sides.  I think if we put 
> this more-or-less in the middle of a 10 x 14-foot room it would be fine.
> (I have 10 x 14 in mind for the 2 offices and 1 storage room, so I 
> thought it might work for the server room.)
>
> Thanks for any help you can give me.
>
> Phil
>