Preparing New School Building

We will move another school building. I want to share my preparing a new school building experience with you!
DON'T FORGET! You can find more details for technical issue on the other posts. Please search any topic or any questions on the home page of this blog page. This is only for a general information about my experience!

My First Experience: I never see a constructor which catches estimated time. The constructor company was giving to building January 1st. However, it was ready in May!
My Second Experience: Follow your job! Create a contact list for vendors (camera guy, smartboard guy, cabling guy, sales guy... etc.) and follow the expected project finish date. Have several building maps. And DO NOT pay any cent, if the job is not completed! Check items one by one.

IT RELATED EXPERIENCE

  • Purchasing Items: Work with a good vendor.  Plan the following 5 years. Decide what you need! Don't buy very expensive materials, buy what you need. I prefer CDW-G or B&H. If your school is qualified for e-rate, follow the e-rate process! Purchase your items such as AP, switches, 1ft cables for server room, firewall, filtering system (I prefer iBoss), UPS, smartboard, computers (VDI; thin clients 😉), office/main printers, server computer... etc.
    Don't forget to buy 1 ft and colorful cat 6 cables and fiber cables for server room! I used the same color cables for the same type of device. 
  • Fiber Internet: Purchase enough external IP addresses and at least 1Gbps internet. You can also use firewall to setup internal devices to external IP such as camera server.
  • Server Room (Main&Side): Put the server ranks in a good part of the server room. Make sure that you can reach the back and front server easily. The rack should be designed as a hub-switch,  hub-switch... etc. It means, once the cabling guys put hubs, there should be space between hubs so you can add your switches between them. There should some woods on the wall so, phone or page system can be installed on the wall!
    Don't forget to put an outlet for UPS. And also put power outlets as much as you can!
    Also, put at least 2 fiber (1 of them is backup) and cat 6 to connect the buildings, if you have different buildings.
  • Camera: Don't forget to label them. It makes job your easy for troubleshooting
  • Smartboard: Make sure that the smartboard can hang up on the wall. If it is needed, put some woods between classroom walls. Otherwise, you can find your smartboard on the floor in the morning. 🤯
  • Cabling: Labeling is very important. I checked our labels one by one before signing the papers and at least 50 labels were incorrect.
  • Security Access Card System: Staff can open the doors with their ID card with a schedule. 
  • Internal Phone System/Lines: I prefer IP phones. You can connect the buildings via VPN if you don't have fiber between the buildings.
  • External Phone Lines: Contact your phone provider (Verizon, Comcast, whatever it is) as soon as you can. You will need some phone lines for fire, elevator before getting permission to enter the building. 
  • Page System/Zones: I recommend several zones for the bell/page system. So you can turn off some zones if needed. Main zone (the entire building, Hallway A, Hallway B ... etc.) When we have finals for specific classrooms, we disable bells for their zone.
  • Classrooms: Put enough cat 5e/6 input. Make cables according to AP location. Plan where the IP phone will be located and put cat 5e/6 input accordingly.
  • Don't forget to get maps and IP lists from the companies.


Installing Networking

Setup Sonicwall firewall
If you buy Cisco Meraki switches, your job is easy. Setup the main switch first. See Cisco page; http://www.myiteducation.org/2018/03/cisco-meraki.html
  • Setup Interfaces (VLANs). 
  • Setup SSIDs (Wi-Fi) Don't forget to rules. Especially for guest network.
  • Don't forget TRUNK port.
Filtering iBOSS
  • In and out of network filtering
  • Chromebook extension and json file
Server Server 2012 R2
  • AD
  • DNS (Forwarding Google DNS)
  • Make them trusted server between schools.

Also, don't forget to check the other pages to set up other IT equipment.




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