What Would You Like to See in an Ops Center?

binaryspiral asks: "I work in a network operations center that has a fair amount of tours and escorted customer traffic. We (the ops employees) have been given the option of submitting ideas for a redesign that would upgrade our ops center to something more functional and visually impressive to potential customers who visit. I'm also looking into software applications that monitor our systems and put them on large displays but a lot of it looks ho-hum. Unfortunately, one of the criteria is that this redesign be functional and visually appealing. I would ask the Slashdor crowd to share with me the things you hate or love about your ops center. Any suggestions or ideas from this crowd might actually be what I'm looking for!"

Ambient Devices Orbs

[PylonHead]

I think a bunch of these [ambientdevices.com] in some systematic display would be pretty awesome. Maybe they pulse green slowly when things are good, and flash red when all hell is loose.

What every NOC needs

[GryMor]

A low yield fusion weapon to make raiding the NOC a bad idea. Only helps if everyone has one, should disuade invasion by hostile forces.

Re:Tell them thanks but no thanks.

[toddbu]

I once was told that the best way to scare away a venture capitalist is to invite them to your posh office and serve them a catered lunch. Most VCs are bottom line folks and understand that any money spent on flashy stuff is just wasted cash. The same can be true of your customers - they'd rather get good service than see a cool data center.

Re:You only have to live up to Hollywood

[ChipMonk]

I once interviewed for an ISP housed in an old telco central office. They had the windowed room with the big racks and lots of blinkenlights, and five monster projection screens with real-time network activity indicators. Two rows of desks faced the screens, and every desk had a phone. Because it was in an old central office, it was also a fallout shelter (until some dope put in the glass front door), and it had a ton (possibly literally) of backup batteries and a big Diesel generator. I felt like I was interviewing on the set of War Games.

ATT Global NOC

[paulywog]

AT&T has a pretty awesome global operations center:
http://www.research.att.com/areas/visualization/pr ojects_software/photo_global_center.jpg [att.com]

Re:Giant screens

[JediTrainer]

And THEN you need to hire about 30 circus midgets, paint them orange, with green hair and stripey suits, so that whenever a potential customer gets locked into a server cage they can magically appear and sing a little song...

With apologies to Roald Dahl...

Oompa Loompa, Doobidie Doo
Another Stupid Dumbass, Locked-in Are You!

Oompa Loompa, What do you See?
Don't let him out, he's a PHB!

Re:Tell them thanks but no thanks.

[toddbu]

The company's growth has been off the charts and we've added a lot of new people

Ok, now you should really be scared. Very few companies can sustain massive growth spurts. More often than not, a company will get a bunch of new business and assume that more is coming, and they spend accordingly. If I were given this task, I'd focus on building a system that was extensible and forget about the looks. When they come in for a tour, tell your customers that while it doesn't look very sexy, you've chosen to build a solid system that can grow with their needs. Then put the money that you saved in a bank account for a rainy day.