I finished off the physical design for the MDF and IDFs a while ago and thought I would take the time to post these in case you wanted to build your own 3000 person corporate conference at home. I am only covering off the network side of things below – there is a massive HP + Microsoft private cloud solution going in at the event that will need post(s) in its own right.

In terms of fast Internets

• 1000 mbps of Internet connectivity provided by Telstra Internet Direct. This is a high performance e-line service back to Telstra Internet Direct in the Charlotte St exchange (i.e. it is a wholesale/service-provider quality service, uncontended back to their core).
• An additional 500 mbps of Internet connectivity from Over The Wire as a redundancy option.
• BGP routing under our own AS9984 to make the best use of the combined link.
• IPv4 and IPv6.

In terms of WiFi

• Cisco 5508 WLC
• 50 x Cisco Aironet 1252 access points
• Each AP has 2 x radio interfaces (2.4 and 5GHz) for a total of 100 radios supporting 802.11a, b, g, and n

In terms of physical infrastructure

• 2 x Brocade CER units for core routing
• 2 gbps LACP core trunking between the routers, core switches and wireless LAN controller
• 1 gbps distribution network
• 77 switches deploying 2000+ ports of connectivity

IDF Physical Design

MDF Physical Design

Also available as a PDF export of the original VSD:

Project 3031 – Tech·Ed 2011 Network Design and Implementation (Microsoft Pty Ltd) – Network Design

If you have any questions then post them below.

In an event such as tech•ed, managing data cables is in itself, a job which could challenge the best of logistical minds.  There are over 1,200 Cat5e UTP cables to install or over 8,200m to lay down, plug into switches, test, secure to desks & stage plinths and of course plug into computers at the other end. Don’t forget the task of recollecting them all at the other end in a manner that doesn’t result in the biggest bunch of copper and plastic spaghetti in the world.

To help with the taming of this cable mammoth, a colour coding system is used to make what would normally be a challenging task just that little easier.  With experience, we’ve established the best combination of lengths. The colours were chosen based on what are standard available colours without the need for excessive custom makes :

• Grey Cables : 2m
• Yellow Cables : 3m
• Green Cables : 5m
• Orange Cables : 8m
• White Cables : 10m
• Purple Cables : 15m
• Blue Cables : 20m and over

The result is cable installers and the technology team can quickly identify the appropriate cable. It hasn’t always been like this. Before we had a colour coding system for the lengths we had a huge wastage issue with excess length. So much a number of years ago we reduced the cabling costs by 30%.

What happens to all of the cables after the event? You would appreciate the cost involved when replacing cables, not to mention the environmental impact. To maximise integrity, cables are used for no more than 2 events and so costs are amortised. If cables have been in trafficable areas, such as where trolleys and feet run over them, they are replaced after each event.  At the end of the event, the task of recollecting, rolling and sorting patch leads is job that may leave you chrysophobic, but the method of colour for length has made our “Where does that cable go” jigsaw easier to piece together.

Maybe I should step back a bit, back to November last year. Or further back.

So, this is my 10th Tech Ed as Technology Project Manager. Honestly I have the coolest job on the project (Kleefie always said he did). My role is to work across the business owners, sponsors, venue and technical guys where anything technology is involved. Pulling a truck load of bits together into some type of plan. That is under the watchful eye of Jorke as the technology lead for the project and David Connors as the Engineering lead.

We have a structured 5 phases approach to the delivery of large scale event technology. Long before you get to know about the good stuff like mini notebooks (possibly the coolest take away ever. So much so it has other Tech Ed events around the world wishing they had the idea first), we conduct a feasibility phase. Various Microsofties, the event agency team and the Engineering team comes together to look at how the project could work be at the proposed venue. We don’t work with a load of detail at that stage, but we look for the obvious pitfalls around timing, location, connectivity etc. This phase brings with it long brainstorming sessions and usually lots of research tasks. That in turn means I and a swag of others spend ages writing reports on the if, but, and may etc. All necessary stages for the business guys to make the big decisions. Once the decision is done setting dates, locations etc in stone we start the longer road of understanding what the business folks need the technology to deliver.

So, no Jorke I’m not going to be the International Man of Mystery and neither are the rest of the team. Stay tuned and over the next few weeks we will share more of what’s going on.

- DavidH

Its no secret we’ve been spending a lot of time checking out the venue to ensure we’re getting adequate access to wireless and network facilities. On our last site visit we had the venue network engineers working with codify to figure out ‘black spots’ in the network and work towards a root cause. We were lucky enough to have a loner machine from Nick to test out the profile, the results of which you will see later, but the size factor of the machines make them really easy to cart around the venue, and I generally averaged about 330 Mbps on the network – of course that’s really easy to do when you’re the only person connected….

While the codify guys started getting down to business, we were tasked with another very important job;

Tasting the tech•ed and APC delegate menus….

Some days you have to work very hard, and I guess this was one of those days; leaving the codify guys to continue working on the network, we dragged the jomablue guys down for opinions on the menu. Now I’m not going to go into detail on all the items served but there was an amazing range that was presented to us, such as:

• Beef with Ginger and green peppercorns
• Ocean Trout
• Beef and mushroom Risotto
• Fruit Shots
• Seafood Paella
• Lamb Korma
• Lamb Cutlets

Now bear in mind that this was for both events so we can’t guarantee you’ll see any of them (unless you are going to both..) oh.. there was bunch of wines as well, but best leave you to enjoy that for the event itself. Some shots below…

The team led by “Fletch” at GCCEC did an awesome job of exciting us about what the delegates are going to experience food wise.

Those photos above don’t really do it justice and after we ate till we couldn’t eat no more, we rolled/staggered our way back to find the codify guys still working hard, apparently testing what appeared to be some strange speed results from a couple of the wireless access points.

So as you can see we’re working VERY HARD to give you the best level of service possible for tech•ed and APC…. well at least some of us are

- jorke

We’re going to give the warts and all view of what’s involved in doing this focusing around the pragmatic approach of logistic and planning for this event and those related such as:

• Products and technology used for the event
• How the logistical planning is done
• How to you build a network for such and event and all the prep work.
• Tons of other information in mind numbing detail!

Plus of course lots of statistics and prediction that all go into delivering this kind of technology for the event.

So first of all some introductions for the core delivery team;

Jorke Odolphi – Microsoft – Infrastructure Architecture Evangelist /  tech•ed Technology Guy – responsible for the delivery of the infrastructure technology and ensuring and enabling that Microsoft has the best technology on show.

Other duties include attending long meetings and staying awake, breaking down barriers in delivery, helping the business understand the logistics and food/wine tasting.

(source: flickr.com/photos/heroeshappen)

Codify – International Men of Mystery – These guys actually DO the delivery of all the core infrastructure to tech•ed such as network connectivity, Wireless Networks, building machines for speaker rooms and connecting everyone to the internet. Simply put if you’re going to be putting anything on the network at  tech•ed  these guys are involved in some form. As a result they’re slaves to the network for the event!

To protect their identity (and they’re camera shy) the picture on the right is an artists rendition.. (source wikipedia.org)

Jomablue – International Men of Mystery – again another group of camera shy individuals. These guys are the core of the logistics for the event. When any piece of technology is placed in a location in the event these are the guys bumping it in, plugging it in and making sure the the power is right and in fact everything is right.

To protect their identity (and they’re camera shy) the picture on the left is an artists rendition.. (source wikipedia.org)

Of course we’re only scraping the surface of what we all do, and we can’t forget all the other people we interact with such as the tech•ed core team, Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre staff and if course all the awesome staging staff. We’ll be hearing from all those people leading up to the event, so sit back take it in and tell us what you’d love to hear from the bluelit parts of teched.

- jorke