When Sun Microsystems decided to build their prototype
N1 Grids High Density Lab, they came to Cal Coast Telecom to address
the structured cabling needs. We got involved at an early stage and
played a significant role in the final design of the facility.
Today’s high-density servers and network equipment,
especially blade servers, generate a lot of heat, sometimes up to 14KW
per network enclosure. Keeping these systems cool is important,
as high temperatures reduce their performance, reliability and endurance. Normally,
such labs are built on a raised floor to allow cold air to be blown under
the floor to reach the equipment that needs to be cooled. It is generally
agreed that there are too many space demands for cooling, cabling and
electrical systems to be met only by the area above the enclosures.
At the Sun N1 Grid Lab site, we did not have the option
of installing a raised floor. We needed to be creative. Working with
Sun employees, APC engineers, structural engineers and general, electrical
and HVAC contractors, Cal Coast Telecom helped develop a workable solution.
Cal Coast Telecom assembled, installed and seismically
braced 28 APC Netshelter network enclosures, air removal units, and power
distribution units that formed the core of the lab. We installed
the cable tray and racks along with the 10 Gigabyte copper and fiber
optic cabling that interconnected all the lab enclosures and also connected
the N1 Grids High Density Lab to other labs in the same building.
Similar Cal Coast Telecom projects include:
Sun N1 Cluster Lab
Sun N1 Agnews Lab
IBM ARC Lab
IBM Shark Test Area
IBM Tivoli Data Center
Valiant Networks NOC / Data Center
Hyatt Monterey – T-Mobile Wireless Hot Spot
Install
T-Mobile needed to provide wireless hot-spot coverage
to the Hyatt Regency along the golf course in Monterey Bay. This was
complicated because the hotel was not a high-rise, but a campus of
26 smaller buildings, built between the 1940s and 1980s, that all required
complete wireless coverage.
The existing phone cabling was either buried in the ground,
or the existing conduits were full and/or collapsed. There were no communication
pathways linking the buildings together.
Cal Coast Telecom, working with Comm-Works and E-Rev
for T-Mobile, ended up installing a custom system consisting of 99 indoor
WAPs, 47 outdoor WAPs, 10 IDFs, 2 fiber optic cable pulls, and 11 rooftop
antennas. Connectivity was backhauled from the IDFs to the MDF through
nine wireless bridges and a fiber optic trunk.
Because many of the buildings were built before 1970,
there was no allowance for telecommunications pathways. Cal
Coast Telecom designed and installed almost 2000’ of custom raceway,
and installed cable runs above hardcap ceilings to aesthetically conceal
the communications cabling.
Similar Cal Coast Telecom projects include:
Hitachi Global Storage—installed a wireless network
for their San Jose campus
IBM—installed wireless network for their San Jose
campus
Independence High School—installed a campus-wide wireless network
as a subcontractor for IBM Global Services
IBM Clean Rooms
Operational clean rooms are extremely sensitive areas, where even trace
amounts of impurities can damage valuable products and have a profound
impact on a company’s profitability. At the same time, the facilities
must remain operational at all times in order to meet customer demand—even
when work needs to be done in them. This makes for a very difficult working
environment, requiring full containment suits and a thorough wipe down
of all material brought into the facility. Additional steps must be made
to capture and contain any and all debris before they can escape into the
clean room atmosphere.
Fortunately for IBM, Cal Coast Telecom technicians have extensive
experience working in operational clean room environments. That’s
why we were selected to upgrade the connectivity to their clean room
computers and tools at IBM’s main San Jose Site from token ring
to Ethernet. Not only did Cal Coast Telecom technicians install
the cabling in operational clean rooms, but they also installed thousands
of feet of raceway to house the new cabling and developed innovative
and custom mounting methods to properly brace and support the raceway
and other hardware. All done with minimal interruption to IBM business.
Service Work
When someone calls Cal Coast Telecom for even the smallest job - whether
it’s running a data cable to a cube or cross connecting some
phone lines - they are not ignored or given an excuse. They are assigned
a highly-experienced Cal Coast Telecom service technician and receive
a quality installation and a thorough follow up of every project.
Cal Coast Telecom maintains a complete service department with technicians
ready to be scheduled with one day's notice (within 4 hours in emergency
situations) for any of the following projects:
Moves, adds, and changes (MAC)
Retail location support (point of sale devices [POS], shopper
track, general networking)
Circuit extension (phone lines, data circuits)
Phone switch support
Basic network support
Riser management
Lifescan - A Johnson & Johnson
Company
Lifescan, maker of premier diabetes test equipment,
was in the midst of a major network upgrade by IBM Global Services
when they learned that their aged cable infrastructure would not support
fast Ethernet. Fortunately for Lifescan, IBM Global Services
came to Cal Coast Telecom, which promptly embarked on a major cable
remediation project for Lifescan’s Milpitas campus.
Cal Coast Telecom installed, within only a three-month
window, a completely new category 6 network for 2,500 users spread over
five buildings. Not only that, the whole installation was completely
seamless to Lifescan employees, who kept working throughout the whole
process.
How did we do it?
First, technicians working from 6:00 pm to 2:00
am installed the new cable while leaving the existing cable undisturbed.
Then, starting on a Friday night, Cal Coast Telecom
technicians removed the old cable, dropped the new cable to the user
locations, terminated the cable in the telecom rooms, tested and labeled
all the outlets.
By 9:00 am Sunday, we were able to turn a whole floor
of a building over to IBM’s engineers, so that they could connect
the new cabling to the new network equipment.
Lifescan’s employees noticed nothing during
the entire process, except on Monday, when they came to work and had
a much faster, more reliable network connection.
