Paladin Roaming

Orange County Rack Job

The O.C. crew felt I didn't know what I was doing -- they ripped my work apart, ignored my plans, built the Call Center THEIR WAY. They're gone, I have to maintain the mess they left.

The Content Engine got left behind, my girlfriends sent me a new one to install. Piece of cake! I had installed a seven foot tall four-post server rack, to be fed with a full width patch panel of 24 jacks back to a matching panel sitting between the two LAN switches. The way I had the equipment room planned it would have been at most an hour job to unbox, mount, and connect a new server.

ah... that was with MY plan. The Great and Wonderful O.C. Crew had a much better plan.

To start, since their wire management took up so much room, they moved the 8450 router into my server rack (that's the big thing taking up the lower half.) Then, of course, they spaced everything nice and evenly. NO PROVISION FOR GROWTH!!!

So, to add the content engine, I first have to rearrange the existing equipment. Move the keyboard shelf down, move the monitor shelf down, move the keyboard/monitor switch down. Mount the content engine.

Power.... Hmmm... Interesting. I had two 30 amp and two 20 amp Lieberts. Each 20 was to power the switches, first and second floor. One 30 was for the LAN equipment, the other for the 8450 which carries the telephone system. The Servers had their own HP R3000, nearly new, in the existing server cabinet that was supposed to come over with the servers.

With the rearrangement, the 8450 and it's 30 amp Liebert was moved to the four post server rack. The nearly new HP R3000 that should have powered the servers is not to be found. Wasn't installed in the new call center, not left behind in the old. Worth about $900 on Ebay.

The two 20 amp Lieberts associated with the phone system were left at the old location, I'll move them in tomorrow. Have to. Have no place to plug the new content engine into.

OK.... How about an Ethernet connection and the connection to the remote monitoring....

See the pretty rack on the left, with the Panduit wire management on the side. That serves the same purpose as sweeping dirt under a rug. Pull the cover and you find a rat's nest of wires (right).

Instead of a rack mounted patch panel with 24 jacks they provided four four-position surface mount jack housings (the white rectangles on the right). Instead of short 2-3' patch cords they have, I donno maybe 8' patch cords. The incoming cables and jack housings and patch cords are all jammed into the wire management along with the orange fiber innerduct and fibers -- the path in/out is wrapped tightly in the top siderail of the server rack. What goes where? Nothing is labled, so I get to trace everything.

Bottom line -- I don't have enough cabling. I planned for 24, they installed 16 and used all 16.

Posted by Paladin at October 6, 2008 07:04 PM