I AM...

    kellen_butler's photos More of kellen_butler's latest photos

    Winter Break Wrap-Up

    1/05/2008 09:14:00 PM

    Here is a taste of what I worked around this Winter Break:
    This first image is just an overview of our server closet.
    Server Rack
    A schematic showing the devices in the rack
    server_rack-724775
    The biggest project I took on was relocating all of our phone lines into the server closet. Our old phone system was located in our main office and when replaced we had it installed in the server closet, but ties were just added to tie the lines over from the main office. Now all (or almost all) are cleared out. There are 3 blocks that remain. Two of the blocks have absolutely no use and the third is being used for all of our devices off of the phone system (fax, alarm panels, postage meter, and phone tree). Next time I get a chance those will get cleared. (Note the lights in the bottom right of the picture, I will refer to them later)
    Old Patch Bay
    In addition to relocating the path of the lines a set of patch panels were added to allow for the non-technical office manager to change extension easily.
    Patch Panel
    I also worked on our alarm systems some. I actually did no work on this panel, but I needed a visual. The panel that I did work on needed an additional power supply to meet the draw we were putting on it from motion and glass break detectors. The alarm panel shown is located next to where our old phone system was. This panel will be one of the final items to move into the server closet.
    Alarm System
    The final item I worked on was adding a set of buttons and lights that will allow of the control of our door locks remotely. This all runs through the input/output board that is in the bottom right of this enclosure.
    AEC
    For the most part all of these projects went off very smoothly. We did find that we had been ignoring our power consumption while moving all of these devices into this single room. One morning I walked in to find our breaker had tripped. One of our servers did not get shut down properly when the batteries ran out. When the system booted back it gave the dreaded "No Operating System Found" error message. Fortunately the system just got a bios reset and raid reconfigure and the system was up and running again.

    After this event we decided it was time to look into how much power we are using. We added up all of the peak current draws for all of the devices in the room; we found we were up past 60 amps on a single 20 amp breaker! Needless to say we are already in the process of running two more dedicated power lines (10 GA) on indvidual 20 amp breakers boosting our total breaker amperage in the room to 60 Amps (not including our dedicated AC). With the 10 GA wire and the existing 12 GA wire we will be able to get 30 + 30 + 20 = 80 total breaker amps to the closet safely if we ever desire to increase the breakers.
    1 comments

    1 Comments:

    Cool!
    By Anonymous Anonymous, at January 6, 2008 2:47 AM   Post a Comment