Building a lab

[NightShade01]

Hello all! First just wanted to say that I have googled building a lab and have many different ideas for how I wanna design it...but I wanted some other opinions. Second I just graduated college and thought it would be easier to find a sys admin / network admin job.....clearly I was wrong. I landed a support technician job for a school and work with 3 others on my level and 1 systems engineer. Basically I'm trying to build a lab to improve my skills and learn more real world things. I was hoping for some feedback on tasks that anyone here might perform daily....projects they have done that I could try duplicating, etc. etc....

All feedback welcome....my biggest issue is that I have some certs and a TON of theory for how things work but very little hands on exp...whole reason I couldn't get a sys admin position.

[p858snake]

My suggestion would be to design/layout the room a couple of different ways on paper then ask the teachers that would use the room most often what/how they would use it and what suggestions they can offer.

[contink]

Also well worth finding some space and putting boxes, tables, etc... out and then sitting down, moving chairs, etc... and seeing how the space works. It's not just about the computers and you'll earn bonus points (well in my world) if you don't forget this detail

One lab I saw had enough space for the chairs and the children to get to the chairs but, once they sat down, nobody was getting to them, or out of there, without the rest of the row getting up and out of the room.

[plexer]

I think the OP is reffering to a test setup/dev lab for him to learn with not setting up a computer suite.

Virtualisation would be good here if that is the case.

Ben

[NightShade01]

Yes plexer is right I was referring to a test lab. I have a virtual lab and a physical one. I've tried to mirror some of the configuration we have at work although its quite a mess and hard to understand how things are layed out because so many people have change up the layout of the network.

[BatchFile]

If it's a new lab from scratch, a cool feature to incorporate is a separate circuit, switchable from the teacher's desk, for all the monitors to plug into

"Right class, stop what you're doing and look this way"
<"Click!"


stops the blighters fiddling while you're talking, and focusses their attention, that's for sure

[plexer]

Tony I think you missed the op's reply above yours somehow?

Ben