As part of managing a company move, we project managed the build-out of 55,000 sq. ft. of office space including a Data Center containing ~50 racks of equipment. To conserve space, our design skipped the typical raised floor and went with all overhead cabling, power, and HVAC. The Client's business is hosting online trading communities and their environment included Tandem, i-Series, Windows, Linux, and Sun. Dynamic requirements for their Customers often drove application changes and system reconfigurations. In support of how IT managed their environment, we customized the cabling by installing patch panels underneath the overhead ladder rack. Top of rack switches were easily patched in to the "floating" patch panels and maximized flexibility for future reconfiguration of Data Center layout. Power for racks was also supplied off the ladder racks into Zero-U PDU's.

This mini-project was part of fixing up a remote Data Center to become "lights-out" i.e. no local IT staff. If you ever had to re-do cabling, you can appreciate these "Before, During, and After pictures. Once completed, all open ports were locked down thus requiring local desktop support to engage Corporate IT for all moves, adds, and changes.

We'll post more stories and interesting pics as they happen. Watch this space....