CompanionCube, Ver. 1

Photo: https://imgur.com/gallery/DyJFolm

Nothing groundbreaking, but I thought I'd share because I'm actually quite proud of it. So I work for the second largest ambulance company in the US (second only to AMR), and as anyone who has had anything to do with EMS at any point in time knows, fast response times are of the utmost importance - whether we're talking about dispatch, ground operations, or support. Many companies offer these sort of "crash kits" that can be used to deploy networks at a moment's notice. In fact, for the past few years, we've actually been renting these from a local MSP. Two problems with that though. Although their iteration is very well engineered and fairly reliable, they are extremely expensive to lease, and they can't provide us AT&T FirstNet. 

Enter the Companion Cube. This is a full-depth 4U ruggedized rack on wheels with a Cisco 891-24X ISR (running DMVPN back to our data centers), a Cradlepoint CBA850 with FirstNet LTE Modem, and a Cisco 3702i wireless AP. Pictured is my first iteration which was just shipped out to a new site yesterday. Her name is Eve (in keeping with our radio shop guys who have a Sierra Wireless LTE modem named R2D2, and another named Wall-E). Soon to be deployed are Johnny5, Rosie, DATA, and T-1000. And yes, you bet your ass that hearts will be stenciled onto each rack case, as well as their respective names. Future iterations will also include integrated connectors for the cradlepoint antennas, and a 3702e AP so that the antennas can be mounted externally along with the LTE antennas. I'm also working with our fab shop on modifying shelves to more securely house IP phones. As you can see in the rear photo, we simply shipped a phone in its box just because it was more secure and convenient at the time. It looks like alot of wasted space, but the goal is to be able to store a dozen or so of these complete with patch cables and a handful of phones to deploy either to new offices, or to send with Strike teams during natural disasters where mobile command posts are needed. I've also configured the router with the ability to automatically prefer a broadband connection when provided one (say if we use a hotel conference center as a mobile command post).

If any of you guys have any suggestions, please feel free to drop them in. I'm always open to feedback.