I've started on a big project involving a LAN design and implementation. I'm going to be busy for a bit! This is the first project of this size that I have taken on. I'm sure it's going to last a month or two. The electrician team (yes there are about 8 of them, this is a big install) F%@king hates me because there are over 250 outlets and 3 45U racks of gear. The project is actually for a gaming arcade, so the layout needs to be flexible and cover the floor space. I will be designing the LAN, speccing the outlet requirements and once the sparkies are done - I will be installing and configuring the 2 servers, 6 POS systems and Elastix (Linux Based) phone system.

I will also have the opportunity to use a few TG watchdogs for environmental monitoring. They will be tied to nagios running on the Elastix box, which will also be monitoring the LANs.

Today I've been setting up the racks from scratch. The cement floor isn't sealed, which may kill some gear with dust - they seem aware of this and want to push the deadline. It took a lot of time (more than I expected) to unpack all of the switches! I'm putting in 9 24 port switches. The reason for this is that all 250 ports will never be patched at the same time, there is just a huge amount of them to cover the floor area.

The other minor (hah!) problem I have is that there is no f&*^%king power. Minor details. It looks like there won't be for some time.