Keith Smith - My Blog

My latest IT infrastructure refresh

Sunday, May 15, 2022 - by Keith A. Smith

Two years ago, I took on a new opportunity where the infrastructure environment was stuck in what felt like the tech era of the 2000s, specifically around 2005 and older. Things like network segmentation for security, modern operating systems, applications, hardware, scanning from copiers, ubiquitous Wi-Fi, and more did not exist at any of the sites. It took me just shy of a year to complete this infrastructure refresh. As I write this post,  I'm glad to share that this refresh is done for now. I wanted to share some of the before and after shots.
 
I'll start from the server room and work my way outwards. This comparison shows the lack of cooling in the server room. Notice in the old pic the piece of cardboard on the vent. My guess is that it was supposed to redirect the air to another part of the room. The old A/C was failing and leaking refrigerant, so I replaced it with Redundant A/C units.




The racks were old, making it difficult to rack new equipment. I scheduled a maintenance window on a weekend to remove all the equipment and racks.





Here is a comparison of everything racked before and after. I had the electricians install LED lighting in the room. I moved a lot of services to the cloud but still needed a private cloud for certain services being provided to staff.





Here is a shot of all the racks and new equipment. I introduced virtualization, 1, 10 & 25 gig network connections, temperature and environment monitoring, and enterprise-wide Wi-Fi, which was a first for this org.





I decommissioned the legacy 100meg networking and cleaned up the cable spaghetti with color-coded cabling. I later upgraded the phone system software since it was due.





IDF1 - New 12-strand optical cables were run to this area, and I upgraded the network switches and cleaned up the cable spaghetti with color-coded cabling. Lastly, I added a cellular extender to help with signal strength.





IDF2 - New 12-strand optical cables were also run to this area, and I upgraded the network switches and cleaned up the cable spaghetti with color-coded cabling.




Remote site1 - All equipment had been exposed in a vehicle mechanic shop for years. I'm not sure how the old equipment stayed running in those conditions, but everything was full of dust and grease. I ordered a new 12U APC cabinet, upgraded the network switches, and cleaned up the cable spaghetti with color-coded cabling.



Remote site 2 - This site was the easiest to upgrade. I installed new network switches, added some remote site servers here, and replaced the cable spaghetti with color-coded cabling. 




I created a standardized zero-touch windows 10 image with automated application deployment by department and deployed dozens of laptops, VPN, etc., with docking stations for staff to work from anywhere during the pandemic.




-End
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