Case Study:
Regeneration Support Team
by Thane Brooker
24th September 2008

We have supported Regeneration Support Team (RST), a regional office of Cumbria County Council, for 6 years now. They outsource all I.T. to 8Networks and for a fixed price per seat we provide all PCs, Servers and support. We renew equipment every 3 years to keep them current and this article describes what is involved in the 3-yearly upgrade process.

PowerEdge servers weigh a tonne—definitely a 2-man job.

Installation

We've arrived on-site midday Saturday (later than usual as we dropped off a Server rack en-route for a client we are installing in 2 weeks). First job is to unload.

16 PCs and monitors doesn't sound much... but it's a lot of boxes to unpack.

Right tools for the job

Part of Doing IT the Right Way™ is using the right tools for the job. We need two types of rack-bolts—M6 wide for the Dell rack and M6 narrow for the comms cabinet.

NOT the Zirconium Ceramic model… just the "normal" range.

We also need 6 sizes of screwdriver. We use Wiha screwdrivers from Germany. I'd been looking for a quality screwdriver for a while, and when I opened Wiha's catalogue and saw their range of zirconium ceramic anti-static/anti-magnetic screwdrivers for use in clean rooms, it was pretty obvious their tools were going to be a cut above the stuff B&Q sells—perfect for 8Networks.

Using Blue and White to match our client's Corporate Colours.
Perfect Racking™

This is a very simple 2-server installation so we don't need to do a custom cable job which would have added another day to the installation. That doesn't mean this rack isn't a work of art though—custom made vertical cable management, foot-length patch leads sourced in the U.S. for perfect fit, 4 types of velcro and 2 types of tie-wrap are needed for our "standard" finish!

The rack will be joined to an existing comms cabinet via a 2Gb trunk, which is more than adequate given RST's usage.

Installing servers

Servers are installed now so first job is to configure the Remote Access cards for the local DMZ—this is so we can monitor the server hardware from our office and provide remote reboots, etc.

Tea break

Thanks to Margaret for the home-made cookies, lime pie and Baileys pie. We definitely code much quicker when dosed on caffeine and sugar.

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Case Study: Regeneration Support Team by Thane Brooker 24th September 2008