[nycbug-talk] Recommendations For Data Closet Hardware

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006, Gordon Smith wrote:

> - The room will be used as a demarc for: 
>     - POTS service 
>     - Business cable modem service
>     - Down the road, possibly one or two T1s; for now, I want to make
> certain that anything that needs to be built into the premises is there to
> facilitate that future direction
>     - Down the road, possibly Verizon FIOS (fiber optic) service when it is
> available in NJ
> - For future use, the room will be outfitted with CAT5e home runs going out
> to each desktop
The normal way for this is to have a wooden board where vendors (vz, etc)  
terminate their connections (demarc), and then you wire everything to your
rack, where you connect to your equipment. 

> - I need to select termination panels ("patch panels") through which we can:
> 
>     - Bring in the POTS service
Verizon will accept "110 block" or "66 block" for POTS dropoff. They won't 
terminate it on anything else. Get a "110 block" with a prewired 25-pair 
connector (amp rj-21x) and an AMP 25-pair patch panel (one jack=one pair) 
for distribution in a proper 19" rack.

>     - Bring in 75 ohm coax for the business cable modem
You generally don't get a choice where cableco drops off your coax or puts 
cable modem, but you can try.

>     - Down the road, bring in T1 and/or FIOS service
>     - Hook up a small business phone system and distribute phone service to
> the "station" at each desktop
Generally, small business phone systems mount directly on that wooden
board, most of them are not rackmountable.

>     - Bring an RJ45 network connection out of the cable modem and, through
> the patch panel, connect it to a wireless router/access point located in the
> middle of the office for optimal distribution of the signal
>     - Down the road, install a hard-wired router and switch to connect to
> server machines in the room, as well as hard-wired desktop machines
> throughout the office.
> 
> Other info about the room:
> - The room is 5' x 5' and has a door that locks with a button lock.
> - The door has a ventilation grate on the lower half of the door.  I've
> requested that the room be outfitted with a covered HVAC grate fed by
> ductwork with a 90 degree bend close behind the grate (to keep any foreign
> matter from falling through the duct into the room!).
> - So far as we know, there are no water pipes over or near the room.
How many servers you going to have there? If its a large number, 
overheating can be a problem.
> 
> I've already seen several members of the group recommend vendors in the
> NY Metro area who know how to configure server machines for FreeBSD 6
> with RAID 1+0, and that's going to be very helpful to us; if anyone
> knows of such vendors in central New Joisey, that would be even more
> helpful.  Any recommendations for the patch panel, phone system or other
> hardware would be appreciated, as well as any tips that might save some
> agony down the road.
everything depends on how much money you want to spend on it.

you can get decent analog phone systems on ebay now for 500-1000$. If you
want pimp new IP phones, you might consider something else.

patch panels are 50-100$ a piece at most.

your biggest expense will be to clued people putting it all together. :)

-alex