Looks very tidy! :good: As a end user only, I gotta say that putting LABELS big enough to read on jacks gets LOTS of points. Is there going to be some kind of cover over all this when it's done... or does it get its own little room?
It's in a small room called a NOC -- Network Operation Center. There's nothing in the room but the IT stuff and some shelves for idle hardware. Usually NOCs are seperate rooms, because industry spec. calls for it to be refrigerated at 60F. The labels on the drops make everything easier to troubleshoot in case of a problem.
A Small Update I just finished the paging system, and man that thing is loud. It has to be though, since it's got to carry over our CNC routers (my company makes furniture frames). Also, got the camera system pretty much pegged, so this project is just about finished! All that's left at this point is the data drops for our industrial equipment -- which I can't run until the machines are set up, and final phone system programming -- which can't be done until Verizon brings in our outside lines. And of course, the finishing touches like final wire-management and installing the dedicated AC unit for the NOC. Anyway, if you're still reading this dry rot, I've included some pics for you. Left to right: * A shot of one of our infra-red cameras * The office kitchen, which is pretty overkill for an office kitchen if you ask me * One of the Bogen paging speakers. You can kinda see some of the NEC-compliant wire management too. All the best, -AT
That blank space next to the sink is for the dishwasher, right? Beautiful! If anyone is ever looking for a topic for an article... candid shots of breakrooms/kitchens in workplaces could be very revealing.
More updates on the building project. Finally got around to snapping some more recent pics. Some screenies of the Linux DVR interface, the network rack, and the gigantic vacuum system.
Nice AT I presume your using Network Cameras? Axis? Out of curiosity how long do you keep the camera records for? Over the last 2 weeks i've been making some changes to the layout of our network, due to the increase in company activities and size i've had to reconfigure the whole network into seperate networks as per department, distributed alot of the servers tasks to new seperate machines. Each department now has their own storage / backup server (automated), i've installed 2 new Allied Telesyn Firewalls,2 new 48 Port 1Gbit switches, all laptops are on a wireless network with 128bit Encryption. Have upgraded the line speed from ADSL 512Kbps 20:1 Contention to SDSL 1Mbps 1:1 Contention, upgraded other main office from 512Kbps ADSL to 2Mbps SDSL, have installed Dual ISDN Backup lines in are two largest offices, and reconfigured are VPN (Just over the last 2 weeks - with another staff member)
We're actually not using network cameras at all. The thing that makes the cameras network accessible is the embedded-Linux DVR -- it's a great way to go! To answer your question, we currently have the DVR set to recycle, meaning it will begin recording over the oldest footage when the HDDs are full. Currently it's only got one cheap 120GB HDD for testing, which will be replaced shortly. That's good for about 2 months of recording on 8 color cameras, give or take a week. Then encoding is done with an open-source MPEG4 codec, Xvid, which is very quick and high compression. Soon we're going to replace the single HDD with a 400GB RAID (RAID provided in software). All in all, a really professional solution for very inexpensive! The only thing I'd do differently if I had it to do over would be to run coaxial cabling to the cameras. We instead ran Cat5e, since the cabling is cheap & I know it well, using BalUns on each end. It was cheaper that way but not by much, and a lot more trouble in the end.
