Advice For Home Structured Media Enclosure / Server Closet

[Sherry]

In the process of finishing a basement of a 3-year old home.  House doesn't currently have much media wiring, but the currently unfinished basement makes fishing wires to most places of the finished space relatively easy.  There will be a 6ft x 10ft server closet and in that room I've asked them to put in low voltage structured media enclosure.

I probably don't *need* a server closet, but I don't really like computer fan noise, so I'd like to keep them in a separate room.  My background is mainly software development, but I'll get a small 42-inch rack and build a rack mount NAS and experiment with some other rack hardware.  I'm not mining bitcoin or chia.  The house doesn't have or need a fancy security system, but I do have a wifi-connected doorbell and a few cameras.  I don't foresee needing to have them hard-wired.

I've asked the electrician to run two separate cat6e cables and one RG6 coax to 8 wall plates around the house.  This will give me 16 wires coming into the SMC.  Fiber was also recently added to the neighborhood, so the wire for that will also come into the SMC and I guess the ONT would be mounted there.  Finally the coax  in from the cable company I assume would also be routed through the SMC.

 

My questions are;

1 Does anyone care about RJ11 and/or POTS these days?  There is only one phone jack in the house and I don't think it is even connected outside.

2 Is here any other wiring I should consider running while the walls are open?  Or anything in general that should be thought about/checked/verified re infrastructure in regards to an SMC or server closet?  EG, I think I asked him to run the wires from where they come in from the outside to the SMC through a conduit, but I'm not sure he did that.  (I'm aware I need to consider A/C and protect against water damage.  The outlets are raised about 4 ft off the floor).

3 What should I expect in the SMC re the networking connections?  Will there be some sort of patch panel with jacks labeled from each room in the house that I would then need to run 16 cables (along with cables from the ONT and WiFi Router) into a switch that may be small enough to be mounted in the SMC but more likely will need to be mounted externally?  Or do the wires from the house terminate in some other way?

4 What does power to the SMC usually look like?  Does he electrician mount a 1 or 2-outlet plug on the exterior of the SMC and then I plug in a power strip if I need additional power for things in the SMC?

 

Thanks.

[Needfuldoer]

Get a dedicated 20 amp circuit run to the closet, with a GFCI outlet (or breaker) with a second duplex outlet on its load side. Then you can run just about anything you want in there. if you really hate fan noise, have the walls and ceiling (floor joists) filled with mineral wool insulation like Rockwool Safe n' Sound. Cooling shouldn't be a huge concern in a basement room that side as long as it has an exterior wall.

 

Cabling in the walls should end at a keystone or patch panel at both ends. I hate seeing cables with RJs crimped onto them that just disappear into a hole in the floor/ceiling.

 

Have at least one wall covered in fire-rated plywood instead of drywall. That way you can hang whatever you want on it, wherever you want. I'd start with a shallow wall mount rack like this one to hold your modem, switch(es), and your structured cabling patch panels.

 

RG-6 is perfectly fine for cable TV. Get a powered splitter, mount it to the wall, connect all the room jacks to that, and never think about it again.

 

If having the RJ-11 phone lines run isn't much more expensive than the cost of materials, you might as well. Even if you don't use it, you never know. 

 

Keep all the tech at least a foot off the floor. Just in case.