The Telecommunications Service Entrance Room (TSER) must be designed to allow for the proper termination of cables entering the building and the placement of telecommunications electronics. Therefore, this room must be adequately sized; be relatively dust-free; be provided with adequate, conditioned AC-power (emergency power is highly recommended); be provided with adequate environmental (temperature and humidity) controls; be adequately lighted; be equipped with an equipment grounding bar; be protected against accidental water damage (e.g. sprinkler or sewer system malfunction, leakage from the floor above); and be secured to allow entry by authorized personnel only. The TSER serves the building as a whole; a typical TSER for a 100,000 sf building would be 12' X 8'.
Telecommunications (TC) Rooms provide centralized, environmentally conditioned,
secure physical spaces to interconnect the horizontal cables coming from the desktop
to the building's backbone cables, and contain voice, data and video electronics
equipment. As such, design requirements are very similar to those of service entrance
facilities, although on a smaller scale. It is important to resist the temptation
to under-size telecommunications rooms. Unless adequate space is allocated for both
existing and future equipment needs, the room will soon become a collection of "spaghetti"
wiring and randomly installed equipment. TC rooms serve a particular floor or section
of a floor; one 10' X 11' TC room is recommended for each 10,000 sf of floor plate.
The Equipment Room houses the building occupant’s voice and data networking equipment
(its name varies widely, but it is often called the data room, client/server room,
PBX room, etc.). As a first approximation, space is allocated for this room on the
basis of 0.75 sf per 100 sf of useable floor space; a typical Equipment Room would
contain 400 sf to support up to 400 workstations.
Critical Issues which need to be addressed at Initial
building design
A brief summary of significant IT Infrastructure design considerations
is shown below.
Increased heat loads due to the use of 1U Rack servers. As a result, vertical ventilation alone will not be adequate to cool equipment racks (a typical 8-foot cabinet may generate more than 8,000 BTUs).
Increased branch circuit wiring due to the increased use of dual-corded equipment. As a result, the number of available circuit breaker positions in a PDU may not be adequate.
Increased use of 208 V AC power supplies. This will exacerbate the problem of not having enough circuit breaker positions in a PDU.
Reduced net useable floor space due to equipment manufacturers requiring deeper equipment racks (currently as much as 40"). The effect of this can be partially offset by the use of new high density "1 U" servers and the use of 9 foot high equipment cabinets.
Reduced net useable floor space due to increased clearance requirements in both the front and back of equipment cabinets.
These
are but a few of the hundreds of issues which should be addressed during the Design
and Build phase of a construction project. In today’s ever changing world of technology,
you can see the need to add an Information Technology Infrastructure Design Engineer
or Consultant to your Construction team.
We hope this brief summary of our design philosophy will result in the opportunity
to discuss in detail how we can apply our knowledge and experience to your project
requirements. Contact us today so that we can review your needs and provide the
best available resource to assist you with the design, planning and Project Management
of your next facility upgrade expansion or relocation project.
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