hi
this may not be the best place to ask, so if you have any recommendations on resources on this topic, please let me know thank you.

Say an office building is being built and you are in charge of setting up the IT infrastructure, from the proper place to lay cables to the whole building to each users desktop apps requirements...Where can i find information on building such an IT infrastructure from scratch.? thanks

There are a bunch of advice and guide documents (Google is kind of handy here) available; might be worth a read.

Just some basic considerations though (been there, did that, did some wrong, did some right, learned a few lessons during a wasted youth), in no particular order.

Avoid wi-fi. Ain't safe, too many problems can crop up.

If you can afford it, fiber optic. If you can't, CAT-6. You'll be able to run your intranet and you can run network telephones (dirt cheap for phones).

Secure computer room -- card keys are good, mechanical combination locks are better, change the combinations or card keys periodically -- particularly if somebody is leaving, do it the morning of the separation interview.

Put the computer room in the middle somewhere (no windows) and not in the basement or on the ground floor. Overdo cooling -- no matter how well you plan, you're going to be expanding the server farm in there so leave plenty of empty space and make sure you have enough cooling capacity to do 150% of what you think initially.

Pop for a generator with all the bells and whistles (so it'll start up quickly when the power goes away) and make sure that you've got capacity to run both the servers and the cooling system. Locate the thing where it won't get flooded (unless you're in a desert, you've got to get your emergency equipment above the water that can invade you). Electric utilities do go down; don't get caught without a back up power system.

Think about fire suppression -- some idiot, some day, will do something stupid and your computer infrastructure is your business. Along those same lines, get your back up media out of the building (a bank safe deposit box is good for this where the bank isn't likely to get flooded or burn either); do that at least weekly. Take the stuff home if you have to but get it out there. Figure out how much you can afford to loose and implement accordingly.

If you can afford it, set up a mirror site off-campus.

Train your people -- all your people -- about physical as well as electronic security. That would include how to get out of the building in case of a fire or other life-threatening event. Lock down everything when it comes to lugging memory sticks, lap tops, CD-ROM/DVD and out-of-the-building connections (like use those VPN gadgets and keep everybody up to date). Force password changes frequently. If somebody leaves, force everybody to change passwords, all that kind of stuff. Run periodic, unannounced, emergency drills so everybody is familiar with how to get out.

Keep in mind that the weakest security link in the chain is people -- train them about never, ever giving their login or passwords to anybody, no matter who it is or what they say.

And, hey, make sure the building is built properly, difficult to get into, with current fire protection (not just to local stuff but what's best -- local can be out-of-date). Get your local fire department to take part during construction, they'll be happy to advise you about materials and methods.

Hope this helps some.

thanks for your input, appreciate it. I have searched google before posting, but i couldn't find not because there is none, but because I have no idea on the correct search words for such cases. I tried "building IT infrastruture from scratch" and various others, but to no avail. They don't talk about setting up from scratch from an EMPTY building that is just finished.

what are some search terms I can use? sorry i am not in this industry so don't quite know about it.

Anyway, I will digest the info you gave and if there are any other queries, i will ask again. thanks again

I searched for building IT infrastruture and got quite a few interesting-looking sites on the first page; e.g., http://www.windley.com/docs/World%20Class.pdf, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7tbHCYP3IY along with many others.

The second one talks about building infrastructure in a new office building; didn't look at it but it might be useful, eh?

Searching with Google can be more of an art than a science sometimes.

Hope this helps some.

before i posted, that was what i did. I am not that lazy just that they are not what I am looking for. The youtube video i did not watch till the end, but i think it just talks about an office. Not an entire building (with many floors , huge in size etc). but thanks anyway for trying to help me...appreciate it.

Well, duh, I should have known... sorry!

Anyway, a couple of more thoughts occurred (I'm gettin' old, remember everything in detail from 40 years ago but can't tell you much about the last 5 minutes. Dang).

Something you may want to consider is the younger generation; they all live with pods and pads and who knows what-all and don't much like lugging around a laptop let alone sitting in front of a keyboard and display connected to a server with some sort of cable in a fabric covered box the size of a burial vault. They're coming and they're going to want to use technology their way. The rest of us are going to need to adapt -- and it ain't gonna be pretty, but, frankly, their way has some attractions.

I don't think I'm alone when I get a new cell phone and need to find a 10-year-old to show me how to use the blasted thing.

Infrastructure must take those things into consideration. Your communications facilities will need to handle not only "terminals" but every-growing wi-fi demands (along with securing your intranet to protect your information). Your best bet, I would think, is fiber-optic in the core with floor-by-floor distribution via fiber as well as wi-fi capacity -- and I'd at least double (and more likely quadruple) wi-fi capacity above what I think I'll need so I don't have to redo things two years from now (or, what the heck, six months from now).

Basic considerations are where to put your server farm -- somewhere adjacent to the core, on a middle floor to keep the distribution lines as short as possible (you do pay for the stuff by the foot) with floor by floor subnets. If you've got a locked-down floor plan (which is highly unlikely, those things change by the week before the furniture and equipment actually show up), you can start figuring out where to hang power and communications cabling, where to put the drops from the ceiling, where and what things are going to be. Simple stuff like conference room audio and video that can be isolated from your intranet (so a vendor can plug in and do a presentation but not have any connection whatsoever with your network -- they lug PCs around and you don't want to pick up any nasty diseases from them).

You have to contend with outside communications; what is the phone company going to provide in the way of internet service? One way or the other you're going to be dealing with the phone company irrespective of who the vendor that connects to your building may be. Can they give you the bandwidth you're going to need? At what price? Would satellite service be feasible (and would it be reliable)? Can you live with satellite delay time (it's 22,500 miles up, 22,500 down to a land-based server, out to the Internet, back up 22,500 miles, back down to you 22,500 miles -- it's the speed of light but that delay time can play havoc with VPN connections). Maybe a combination of both?

Is power reliable? You must have a back up generator. Period. But give serious thought to how reliable the power company is and how much private infrastructure you'll need to keep running if the threats to the power grid we keep reading about actually happen. Can you tolerate a few days or weeks without outside electrical service if a cyber attack on the grid is successful. Do you need to keep running if power goes away -- if everything, everywhere, is down, can you do a clean shutdown, lock down the facility and wait it out.

Are you're located in a hot place that requires a lot of air conditioning to be livable. Would water cooling of your servers be feasible and, of course, is there water available to do that (along with electrical power to run the pumps). Can you make use of wind or solar (and do you want to spend the capital to do it).

You need to take security seriously; both physical and electronic. Your computers are important but your people are more important. If you practice good back up protocol, you can get back in business quickly in the event of a catastrophe -- computers are cheap, humans that know what they're doing are not. Protect your equipment and don't forget to protect your people. Take whatever steps you must to guard against electronic intrusion and keep a sharp eye on attempts (you will get hit, every hour of every day if you're connected to the Internet) and deal with them immediately. Reviewing logs periodically is a good way to find out who's whacking at you and shutting them down; it takes work and dedication but it's cheaper than some clown stealing all your business information.

If you don't do business with China or Korea or any of the other well-known state sponsored intruders, implement country-blocks (simply don't accept connections from all domains in the country). Is that politically correct? Hell, no -- but those are the places that are doing it so make it much harder for them to get at you. It's simple entries in IPTABLES.

If at all possible, try to avoid products of a certain vendor located in the exurbs of Seattle. It's hard, but it's doable. Patch Tuesday begone!

You know, most of this is just practical -- you have to have cables, you have to string them floor-to-floor, you have to distribute them to where folks are going to be. All that stuff winds up in the space between the drop ceiling and the bottom of the next floor up along with the plumbing, electrical and HVAC. Fiber optic is better than wire. Plugging stuff in is safer than wi-fi but wi-fi is going to be required and you must lock everything down to prevent "unauthorized access." You need to keep in mind the lessons of the World Trade Center and what mother nature can do (the nuclear facilities in Japan come to mind). Imagine the worst and try to circumvent it as much as possible. Bad thing happen, protect your people, protect your systems and do what you can to deal with what you think might happen and then think of things that you consider impossible and remember that they're not impossible, they just haven't happened to you -- yet.

CYA.

Hope this helps some.

Then you get trained to do it properly instead of trying to do it yourself or hire a consultant and review their work.

All of it has to meet a large number of guidelines.

Local building codes to include things like ESD, shock hazard, grounding, lightning protection, harmonics to electrical system, heating and air conditioning, filters, rfi/emi. A lot of that can be fixed by using emt to run plenium grade cable or fiber. Still people use fiber on the trunks and copper on the runs but you may find the price of copper kind of high for what you get.

Remember that a 1Gb lan need to be integrated with older equipment.

I tend to dislike wireless but if you must consider the enterprise level stuff. Pretty hard to crack it.

As built need, one year and 5 year plan. Understanding how often your company changes stuff may help you gauge how to install.

Need to know resource needs. Separate wants from needs or use the three need rule. Must have, should have and like to have. Get rid of like to haves.

Energy use. Need for UPS?

Total cost of equipment? Who is selling it and installing it?

That all just scratched the surface. A good building plan would cover it all.

This all is covered in a good network class or program.

thanks all for the inputs. Appreciate it.