I am by no means a server professional, that is why I am coming to you guys for advice.
Our company is looking to purchase an office building that is currently wired for ethernet. We are going to rent part of the building to the current tenants, and take over the remaining part. We want to hook up a small server for file sharing, active directory and network licensing managers (I assume Windows Server 2012 Essentials is our way to go). Should we purchase our own switch to hook our offices and server into? Or, can we just hook straight into the switches/hubs that are already wired up? We only have 6 office employees at the moment.
Is this a security concern and would having our own switch even help alleviate security issues?
Answer
Those existing switches likely belong to someone at the moment (current tenants?) It’s considered a bad act to plug into private switches/networks. On the order of walking into someone’s office and opening their file cabinets. You will absolutely want to buy and operate your own network equipment.
You can re-use the existing wiring. Specifically the drops that go to your part of the building. Make sure that there are clearly labeled distinctions. The cross connects should go into your own network infrastructure. Additionally it would be a good time to set the rules for who has access to that common room. There could be some liability exposure here. I.E. What are you going to do when someone working for your tenant accidentally kicks over your server?
There are methods of creating multi-tenant networks on a single unified set of switches/routers, but they aren’t applicable to your situation.
TL;DR re-use the wiring, buy new switches, set policy for wiring room access.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Barrett , Answer Author : Ryan
