Case Study

The IT manager of a secondary school in Middlesex had a requirement to move an existing IT rack.

The schools current project was to build a new multimedia production suite but the existing floor standing IT rack was in the way of the planned works.

Various options were discussed whereby the Category 5e and fibre optic could be extended so the rack could be relocated within the Multimedia suite, but we finally settled on a solution providing a acoustically sealed cabinet which reduces noise by around 90% and relocating all the cables through an adjacent wall and mounting a new wall mounted cabinet on the opposite side of the wall within the ICT classroom.

A secondary problem was that the ICT classroom has a structural beam in front of where we were to mount the new IT rack, meaning the front door would hardly open if we mounted the rack at the rear. We overcame this by planning to mount the cabinet at 90 degrees to the wall so the cabinet front access was unrestricted. We use high quality racks and the manufacturer confirmed the racks suitability for this side mounting.

In total our engineers relocated 96 Category 5e cables, a multimode fibre optic cable as well as the incoming Broadband Services.

All patching was completed with new 1m Cat 5e leads that were all fitted with unique wraparound labels to each end, this aids easy patching identification in the future and all new patch panels have been fitted with engraved labels. As you can see locating the switches in the middle of the rack allows us to use standard length leads for most of the switch patching and gives a nice neat brand new finish to what was a tired un-managed installation.

All works were completed by our engineers in 2 days during half term.

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