Award: Best Rack/Equipment Room

Integrator: Boca Theater and Automation, Inc.

Comment from integrator: This project was the design and delivery of a flexible and fault-tolerant main equipment closet (MEC) housing an enterprise-class infrastructure that services a 20,000 square foot home, a vibrant business, and a world-class home theater. In Boca Theater and Automation’s experience, the three cornerstones of any successful project in South Florida involve clean power, proper management of heat, and ANSI/TIA certified copper and fiber terminations; enterprise-class systems add in redundancy where it matters.  To achieve this level of performance, the MEC and all endpoints are powered by a RoseWater HUB20 system backed up by a large-scale generator.  The MEC is cooled using a dedicated air conditioner with four backup 300CFM exhaust fans triggered by temperature sensors.  Both systems send alerts monitoring key parameters such as heat, moisture, incoming power, battery health, and more.  Every rack-mounted device can be individually rebooted using the custom-designed touch panel interface, or from sixty-four labeled buttons on the user side of the rack.  BTA designed patch bays provide professional landing points for 11.7 miles of low voltage copper and fiber runs servicing the entire campus, and each termination was tested using a Fluke DSX-8000 system following extended ANSI/TIA guidelines for 10GB permalink installations.