August 27, 2005
How to deal with Cable Trays in a Computer Lab
A few years ago, I worked for Microsoft as a Lab Manager.
I took care of the hardware while the developers used these machines for testing their new code.
A key issue is to be able to reconfigure the hardware as quickly as possible.
Since this is not a static “installation”, overhead cable trays are the best thing to use — you can move networking cables and fibre from rack to rack quickly.
The issue is that these trays are eight feet off the floor. The solution — drywall stilts.
Here is a photo of me in my previous incarnation as computer geek:
No raised floor. This building was never designed for computer labs so a lot of compromise went into its design.
Two especially galling ones were that the loading docks had canopies over them that were too low to support a standard 52' long truck.
Also, although the ceiling height was a nice 10' (2' space above the drop in the offices), the doors into the building were 7' -- just a few inches too low to pass a fully loaded rack on casters, the rack units had to be unloaded as much as possible and then tipped over to pass through. Internal doors were fine. The lobby doors were fine but we could not access the frieght elevator from them. Passanger elevator doors were too low again. Grrrrr...
I was on a Lab Managers group and we had the archetect at one meeting. I knew this was going to happen so I put a nice powerpoint presentation togher to demonstrate the "issues".
The network closets had raised floors but these were added as an afterthought.
I have been going through old photos and will be posting some others in the next few days.
Posted by: DaveH at August 28, 2005 10:09 PMIs that a raised floor or not?
RPI's machine room has both the overhead cable racks and pretty decent space sub-floor. (And an RC car to drag wires around under there, but that's another story.)
Posted by: Al at August 28, 2005 09:23 PM