Server Room Blitz - Day 1

[sidewinder]

This is something Ive wanted to do for about a year as the layout of our server room has annoyed me ever since I joined the school.

Very small, very cramped, and not helped by both cabinets being opposite each other.
So today we (2 of us) started the task of emptying the server cabinet, moving it, getting an old desk out, and putting everything back tidily.
Not a difficult job, but a lot of hard work

So in case anyone is interested (unlikely!), some photos:


The room as it was looking in from the door (circa 2003 till this morning)
As you can see, the fixed desk made getting behind the rack pretty dificult, and out of shot there is another 42U cab opposite the server one, with about 2 foot gap


The view behind the rack


After an hour of removing all the servers (didnt take as long as I thought)


Then we removed the desk, which must have been there as long as the school has. Thanks to the air con pipes, we needed some help from the caretakers jigsaw


The empty room


Rack moved, and being filled in a sensible way (instead of the random way it has been before as servers have been replaced)


And finally, a picture of it all back in. Now all that is left is to get all the cables tidy, something Im already having trouble with as I slightly overestimated the size of the patch cables we would need, as you can see.
I also havent worked out where to put back the Mac server and the Dell tower...hopefully they will fit down the side!


This is the other side of the room, which is also a mess. Although everything from the Cisco switch down is the councils equipment, not ours

[webman]

Nice one We did something similar and you're right - servers do take longer to remove and put back than you think!

[FN-GM]

im not keen on them curtains

[sidewinder]

Indeed webman, especially as they all seem to have different rail designs, some of which were a pain to figure out
Although it was a joy to be able to put back a server and have the rails all the way out, rather than having to bodge it as before due to a lack of space

FN - lol no Im not a big fan either. Will try and get some blinds installed

[FN-GM]

how big is your school?

[sidewinder]

Fairly big - about 1800 students including 6th form, and 200 odd staff
And its quite a sprawling site, we're in the main building but theres a further 16 switch cabinets around the school

[FN-GM]

i was just going to say there arnt many switches and network cables

[john]

Gosh you don't have many servers, looks at the 18 I have for my few children

[sidewinder]

Yeah we get by on not much!
No speed issues though, everything runs smoothly
To be honest though, apart from replacing the 2 5U servers with some smaller ones, theres no way to ever expand without a new server room

As for switches, there are only 2 in there + the core switch, but there are 2 more cabs in the main building alone. In other buildings we have more switches or multiple cabs

[FN-GM]

so if that was day 1, what are you doing on the 7th?

[Oops_my_bad]

so if that was day 1, what are you doing on the 7th?

Buying a decent set of curtains/blinds hopefully

[Joedetic]

A job for the home ecconomics classes maybe? LOL

[FN-GM]

so if that was day 1, what are you doing on the 7th?

Buying a decent set of curtains/blinds hopefully

Ha ha good one mate!

[maniac]

I like a nice tidy server room. Tidied ours out last easter, but it's looking a bit untidy again now as we've made several changes since.

Good job!

Mike.

[FN-GM]

as anything happened today sidewinder?