In a couple weeks, my wife and I close on a house in Middle Tennessee. The house is 4-5 bedroom and 2,540 sq ft, has a 2-car garage, has attic space, and is built on a slab. The house currently has NO networking ran into it at the moment, and I intend to change that in a couple days following closing. Being Middle Tennessee, temps/precipitation looks like this on average: https://i.imgur.com/RY1ZCL9.png
I want to wire up most of the rooms with multiple drops of Cat6 (red block in plan below indicates a keystone jack) ASAP so that I can cut access holes in drywall, patch, and paint before moving everything into the house and get settled in. I intend on running all network drops back to the bonus room closet to a 'downlink switch' (10GbE uplink to core) with POE for APs and cameras. One AP will be installed on the ceiling on the first floor in the living area and another will be installed on the ceiling upstairs to try and get the best coverage. I can easily add another AP to the master bedroom or bonus room ceilings if needed after the fact. The plan blow lays out where I intend to place APs, run Cat6 drops, install cameras, run all connections back to (bonus room closet), and install my server rack.
The plan: https://i.imgur.com/i9ScdZY.png
Server Rack
I currently have a 42U rack (drawn in plan), with a 10GbE switch, 48-port switch, 4x physical servers, 2x 4U 48-bay NAS servers, and 3x UPS'. This rack will be moving with us to the new house, and although temperatures in the garage could be problematic (more worried about UPS batteries than hard drives, but still a concern), I intend to have the rack setup there (see plan). I was going back and forth on whether or not it should go into the bonus room upstairs (pros and cons list below), but am looking for some insight.
Rack In Garage Pro:
I understand this is overkill for most people, but I want to do it right the first time... The biggest thing I'm getting wrong is not building a house that I could pre-wire before drywall goes up... Is my above plan sound? What would you change? Why would you change it? I've never installed network drops in an already built house before - Words of wisdom?
I want to wire up most of the rooms with multiple drops of Cat6 (red block in plan below indicates a keystone jack) ASAP so that I can cut access holes in drywall, patch, and paint before moving everything into the house and get settled in. I intend on running all network drops back to the bonus room closet to a 'downlink switch' (10GbE uplink to core) with POE for APs and cameras. One AP will be installed on the ceiling on the first floor in the living area and another will be installed on the ceiling upstairs to try and get the best coverage. I can easily add another AP to the master bedroom or bonus room ceilings if needed after the fact. The plan blow lays out where I intend to place APs, run Cat6 drops, install cameras, run all connections back to (bonus room closet), and install my server rack.
The plan: https://i.imgur.com/i9ScdZY.png
Server Rack
I currently have a 42U rack (drawn in plan), with a 10GbE switch, 48-port switch, 4x physical servers, 2x 4U 48-bay NAS servers, and 3x UPS'. This rack will be moving with us to the new house, and although temperatures in the garage could be problematic (more worried about UPS batteries than hard drives, but still a concern), I intend to have the rack setup there (see plan). I was going back and forth on whether or not it should go into the bonus room upstairs (pros and cons list below), but am looking for some insight.
Rack In Garage Pro:
- Solid concrete floor (rack weight and can roll)
- Noise contained in the garage
- Heat exhaust not an issue (can vent into garage or through the wall to the outside)
- Not taking up square footage
- Less likely for vibration transfer from drums/music gear.
- Easier to run 30A outlets from the breaker
- Heat/Ambient temperature in the garage
- Bugs
- Need another switch in the bonus closet for all runs to terminate to.
- Close to water heater, but can block that off.
- AC cooling
- No bugs
- No need for additional switches in closet.
- Heat exhaust into the room
- Weight (floor/carpet damage?). Also can't roll the rack.
- Noise
- Occupying usable space
- Vibration from drums/music gear could damage hard drives.
- Harder/more expensive to run 30A outlets from breaker
I understand this is overkill for most people, but I want to do it right the first time... The biggest thing I'm getting wrong is not building a house that I could pre-wire before drywall goes up... Is my above plan sound? What would you change? Why would you change it? I've never installed network drops in an already built house before - Words of wisdom?