Advice
How to actually do it
One procedure per page, from the first move to the last, with the step that settles the outcome flagged as such — and the hardware a page takes for granted is linked because it takes it for granted, not because it pays. Where the answer depends on the building you are in, the equipment you already own or the limits a maker sets, the page says so and sends you to the manufacturer's instructions.
Getting started
What a first network and a first store of files need, and the order in which the parts stop mattering.
Measuring & planning
The lengths, depths and counts to write down before ordering anything: runs, rack units, ports, bays.
Cabling
Running, terminating and labelling a permanent link, and where a ready-made lead beats a crimped one.
- Running a cable into a wall, and terminating it so it stays put A run of cable in a wall outlives every device that will ever plug into it. That is the reason to take the extra half-hour at each end: the equipment gets replaced on a five-year cycle and the cable does not, so the quality of the termination is the part of the network with the longest life.
- Labelling a panel and dressing a cabinet so the next change takes minutes Everything in a cabinet is obvious on the day it is built and anonymous eighteen months later. The half-hour spent on labels and lead management is bought back the first time somebody has to change one port without unplugging the household.
Coverage & placement
Where a radio goes, what walls do to it, and how to tell a coverage problem from a throughput one.
- Placing a router and access points in the building you actually have Moving a router two metres changes a home’s coverage more than moving two tiers up a product range does. Placement is free, it is reversible, and it is the variable almost nobody adjusts before spending money on the one that is not free.
- Walking the building to find out where the coverage actually stops Nearly every wireless purchase is made on a description — the far bedroom is bad, the garden is hopeless. A survey turns the description into a set of readings taken in the same places twice, which is the only way to know whether moving something helped.
Storage layout
Which files live on which drive, how much room to leave, and what a layout costs to change later.
Buying
How to spend a budget so the money lands where it changes something, and which upgrade waits.
Data safety
Copies, versions and the difference between a device that survives a failure and files that survive one.
- A copy routine that survives the box it copies from An enclosure with redundant drives is a machine that keeps working when a drive stops. That is a different achievement from files that survive the things which reach every drive at once, and the second one is the one people believe they have bought.
- Retiring a drive without handing your files on with it A drive leaves a household by being sold, given away, returned under warranty or thrown out, and all four routes have the same problem: the files were never removed by the actions most people take. The way to make this easy is to decide it on the day the drive arrives, not the day it leaves.