THE SCENARIO Our office demarc is located in a furnace room, along with our legacy pbx and alarm system base. All service is currently provided by a whole bunch of pots lines. Our new phone system will live in our server room's 19" rack and recieve PRI T1 service, but we still plan to have a few (probably 4) copper lines available to the new system. This means we need to either move or extend the copper service from the furnace room to the server room. One of my goals is to remove the furnace room completely from my cabling/IT infrastructure, and have everything terminating in my server room. This would mean getting direct cable runs from the building demarc to my server room, and it would mean moving the alarm system base.
MORE ABOUT THE DEMARC Our office fills about the front 1/3 of this single-level building. There is a demarc for the whole building, and feeder cables extend from it to the respective "private" demarcs contained within each office. Our demarc fits this description. One thing of note; the service to our office demarc appears to be provided entirely by individual runs of cat3 or cat5 cables; I don't see any 25-pair cables used, there's just a big bundle of wires coming down from the cieling to 66 blocks.
(Very) rough sketch of our building: ======================================================= | Building %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| | Demarc %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%% OTHER OFFICES %%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |----------------------------------\\%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% | %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |----------\\%%%%%%%%%% \\-----------------------------------------------| | Furnace |%%%%%%%%%%%--------%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| | Room |%%%%%%%%%% | Server | %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |---------- /%%%%%%%%%% | Room | %%%%%%%%%%%% Employee | |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%-------- %%%%%%%%%%%% Entrance | |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% OUR OFFICE %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| |%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| ======================Front Entrance=======================
OPTION 1 Run 25 pair cable from the furnace room to the server room. This is probably the easiest option. It would be a simple matter to punch down the pairs to the unpopulated row of terminals on my 66 blocks in the furnace room and punch the other ends down to 66 or 110 blocks in my server room. In that scenario service could exist simultaneously at both locations until cut-over, which is a must-have. What I don't like about this is it creates another set of termination points, meaning another potential point of failure.
OPTION 2 Run new 25 pair cables from the building demarc to the server room. I like the single unbroken run provided in this scenario. But since service must be maintained to the old system until cut-over, this would mean I'd have to keep the existing runs from the building demarc to the furnace room, at least until the cut-over, or I'd have to run feeder cables from the server room back to the furnace room. That seems like a big waste.
MOVING THE ALARM Our alarm system base communicates wirelessly with its sensors around the building and with the alarm keypad. Its current location is in the furnace room, and the alarm keypad is located at the employee entrance. This arrangement is less than optimal for two reasons: 1) There's a large amount of metal ductwork all around the furnace room, and 2) the furnace room is located on the edge of the building; not central at all. In fact we have occasional trouble with the system because certain sensors will fail to check in with the base, and we think it's because of the distance from the base and the lack of a clear signal path to it. Moving the alarm system to the server room should improve the operation of the system because there are fewer major obstructions to signal, and it's more centrally located. At least, that's my theory. Of course the alarm requires direct access to a copper line, which will exist in the server room, either by moving the office demarc or by runing feeder cables from the existing office demarc.
That's about it...I'm looking for comments and suggestions on how others would approach this, and whether I've attached proper importance to some of my goals. I just want to do what makes the most sense in the long run while still being viable & practical in the short term.
Thanks in advance,
BJ