A template for new offices

Posted on September 14, 2010

Now that the first and largest implemtation is almost complete, I have to start thinking about producing an easy-to-understand template that allows us to build site offices in a practically identical manner. One of the main goals of this project was to be able to have a repeatable template of systems and processes that allowed us almost dump a pre-fabricated solution into a physical building, this sort of template would be tried and tested and be the first step to producing a business service of “deploy new office” – a service which until now has been very ad-hoc and piecemeal.

From a very high level there a few things you need to deploy IT systems into a new building:

• Connectivity (Telephony and Data)
• Hardware (Servers, Cabling, Computers)
• Software (Client OSs, Server OSs, Applications)

Our template includes a base for things already which has come as a direct result of building up the first office: We know that a new site wants Dell EqualLogic storage so that it can use the inbuilt replication between sites (for backup etc); two servers for redundancy; an uninterruptable power supply and environmental monitoring. We know that the site needs at least 10mb of internet connectivity, but keeping in line with recent work this will actually start at 25mb, and we know that there is a need for phone lines (for staff to make calls, as well as for alarms etc). In terms of software, the Client OSs are all still going to be Windows XP, (but with a view to upgrade to 7 later on throughout) and the server OSs are going to be Windows Server 2008 R2 – the datacentre licensing here becomes a bit of a no-brainer, which I’ll explain in a follow up post.

So that’s it, that’s the start of our template for a new site office! I’ll explore the three high-level requirements in more detail in future posts.