Technology in learning spaces

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Teaching photography to blind learners > Technical > Technical Forum, 29th April 2009 > Technical Forum 15th November 2007 > Technology in learning spaces

Introduction

The placement and connectivity of servers and desktop computers is an important consideration in the design of new builds. Some issues to consider are:

How many servers will be housed on-site?
Where will the server room be located?
Will fibre optic or UTP cables be used for the network backbone?
Where will the wiring closets be located?
How many wired connections will be provided in each room?
Will wireless access be provided?

Please note: The RSC West Midlands are NOT networking or cabling consultants. We can only give general advice on these issues and we strongly recommend that you use the services of qualified network design and structured cabling consultants in designing and implementing your new build.

Server Room

Factors to consider in designing a server room:

A central location will reduce cabling cost and complexity.
Avoid areas prone to dust, e.g. near a workshop, or likely to flood, e.g. basement or near washrooms.
Temperature and humidity must be tightly controlled, refer to the server specifications for recommended ranges.
Access must be restricted to authorised personnel, preferably using an auditable method, such as a card key.
Size should be sufficient to accommodate servers, uninterruptable power supplies and cooling systems. Take into account projected increases in server count over the next three to five years.

A good article on server room design can be found here.

Since the number of servers and their form factor, i.e. tower or rack, will affect the size and the cost of the server room, a new build may be a good opportunity to investigate reducing the server count. Options to consider are:

Moving from tower to rack or blade servers
Server consolidation through virtualization
Outsourcing certain services, such as e-mail
Remote server hosting

Cabling

The components of a structured cabling system include:

Telecommunications / Switch Rooms

Houses switches, routers etc. which connect the backbone and horizontal cabling systems. There should be at least one on each floor of a multi-storey building. As with server rooms they should be well-ventilated, in areas free of dust and that are not prone to flooding.

Backbone Cabling

Connects the server and communication rooms. The convention is to use single mode fibre optic cabling, rather than twisted pair, as the backbone. Although a fibre installation may be slightly more expensive than twisted pair (copper), fibre is less susceptible to interference and supports higher bandwidths over longer distances. With a fibre backbone it will be possible to accommodate higher network speeds by merely upgrading or replacing the switches.

Horizontal Cabling

Connects the communications rooms to data ports. The convention is to use twisted pair (copper) cables, although fibre may be used for areas that have high network bandwidth requirements, e.g. multimedia suites. The most commonly used twisted pair cabling standards are category 5e (ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A) which supports speeds of up to 1 Gbps; and category 6a (ANSI/TIA-568-B) with speeds of up to 10 Gbps. Category 6a may be prefable because its higher bandwidth, but cost of installation is likely to be higher than that of category 5e cables. It is important that the same category cable and connectors are used throughout a given connection.

An important aspect of planning the horizontal cabling system is determining the number of data ports required in each room. Remember that computers, printers, VOIP telephones, wireless access points etc. may all require network connections. It is easier to deploy excess cables and data ports than to run additional cable at a later stage.

Patch Cabling

Connects computers, printers etc. to data ports, and generally uses the same types of cable as the horizontal system. It is essential that the data ports / patch panels are properly labelled in order to identify the ports in the switch room to which they are connected.