1. Mr. Mark Welton

2.  Along with the physical planning of equipment and port allocation, you’ll need to plan the IP network and VLAN layouts  This is an excellent exercise that will force you to once again think about every device you’ll be connecting  This spreadsheet will also help in documenting the network

5.  Also called rack elevations  diagrams showing how each rack will be built, including every detail  Most common things missed are power, cabling, and patch panels

7.  You should always work out the power requirements for your install  Main information needed ◦ AC vs DC ◦ Voltage ◦ Amperage ◦ Power Connector type  Make sure you include all equipment ◦ Switches, routers, servers … any equipment in the rack that will be powered  This information can be found in the vendor’s web site

8.  Cooling requirements are in BTU (British Thermal Unit)  This will also be provided on the vendor’s web site  You will need to know the total amount of heat being created by the equipment to ensure the cooling system can deal with that amount of heat

10.  Keep it simple - Take a look at any of the drawings in this book. Each is designed to convey a single idea. The more you try to include in a drawing, the harder it will be to understand.  Separate physical and logical ideas - Physical connectivity is very important, but try to keep it separate from VLANs, routing, and other logical subjects. I like to make two drawings: one for he physical ports and another with the VLANs and IP addresses.

11.  Don’t cross lines - Every time you cross a line in a drawing, the drawing gets harder to read. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but try to keep crossed lines to a minimum.  Orient your straight lines - If you put together a drawing in which the straight lines are slightly off the horizontal or vertical, it will look like the etchings of a serial killer. When you take the time to orient all the lines, the difference is dramatic. Similarly, lines drawn at an angle should all be at the same angle where possible.

12.  Delineate when you can - If there are two locations in your drawing, separate them somehow. Put each one in a rectangle (many people rounded rectangles). Using colors or even shades of gray can help as well.  Line up your icons - If you have a row of icons in your drawing, take the time to line them all up along a single axis.

13.  Hostnames should be constructed so that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the network can determine the devices’ functions  The purpose of a hostname is to identify a device  Hostnames should be easy to remember  When a hostname is coupled with a domain name to make a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), the resulting string should be obvious and simple

14.  gadnslax1mai750901 ◦ gad - The name of the company (GAD Technology) ◦ ns - Network services ◦ lax - Los Angeles ◦ mai - Main Street ◦ 7509 - The device is a Cisco 7509 ◦ 01 - It’s the first 7509 in this location  Not very helpful

15.  Try to use the function of the device in the name  If you have multiple locations, add the location to the hostname  For equipment that is deployed in pairs use a number to so that  You can also us DNS hierarchies to determine location

16.  wan-1.lax.domain.com  The first wan router in the Los Angeles office  If you are a provider and have many customers then customer name may be useful  GAD-WAN-1  but if it is one company I would hope they know who they work for

17.  On routers you may have a design that has multiple interfaces with multiply routes out of the network  Using the interface in the DNS hostname can help with troubleshooting

18.  [gad]$traceroute switch9.lax.mydomain.com  traceroute to switch9.mydomain.com (10.10.10.10), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets  1 s0-0-0-1-clev.dc1.mydomain.com 9.854 ms 10.978 ms 11.368 ms  2 s0-0-2-4-dal.dc2.mydomain.com 9.854 ms 10.978 ms 11.368 ms  3 s0-0-0-2-wan.lax.mydomain.com 2.340 ms 1.475 ms 1.138 ms  4 g0-0-12-switch9.lax.mydomain.com 1.844 ms 1.430 ms 1.833 ms