Beautifully OCD cable management

[Andrew Gabriel]

Just had a nice new computer lab built at work, which also has some really nice cabling like some of these.

[Bill]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

The ones with "tidy" bunched together cables all the same colour are only fine until you have a fault and need to pull one end to check the other end is the one you expect to move.

[DerbyBorn]

[e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) wrote in news:n82cuh$kog$1 @dont-email.me:

Very nice - the first one with the mains cables will be ruined when the painter arrives. With the others, one needs to be sure it is permanant before using all the tie wraps.

[The Natural Philosopher]

tie wraps are cheaper than the decorator

[spuorgelgoog]

It's easy to make things look nice if you've got a large budget for pretty coloured cables and cable dump spaces at the sides of the racks to tidy the mess into.

Owain

[Andy Burns]

Yes, IME as soon as you use tie-wraps you've lost, velcro tends to stay tidier for longer ...

[Tim Streater]

Why didn't you label them properly then?

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , [e-mail] escribió:

IME, the people who buy the racks in forget to allow extra for cable management - it doesn't come with the rack for free. Then it's "oh shit, what the f*ck do we do with all those frigging cables"? You need to look at power distribution and order in a large selection of different lengths of IEC power and network cables so you can route appropriate lengths of cable through the cable management neatly without leaving extra which creates an unholy mess.

At one site we were very short of floor space so we (translation, I) moved the racks from backs-to-the-wall into the middle of the room, added two more, threw all the doors out, and used both sides.

One side for all the luser-facing kit with the pretty blinkenlights and the backside for the messy wiring and boring kit like KVMs. Some servers (I'm looking at you, HP) were 800mm D and so filled the entire depth of a standard rack, meaning nothing could be installed in the back in that U space - I had to intersperse those with the kit in the back.

Those were very *full* racks :) I've still got all the scars on my hands and arms from cut-off cable ties while fuddling inside to try and route a cable through for a new device or reseat a connection.

BTW: übernerd alert:

telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl

More interesting than the current SW film... :)

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim Streater escribió:

It's the labelling that's a pain. Really time-consuming and fiddly to do properly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not if every engineer who goes there has a mandatory box of new tie wraps and some cutters for the old..

[The Natural Philosopher]

+1.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not if you gear up with honeymoon pliers and numbered rubber sleeves...

[Davey]

Somebody else installed them, and this is later troubleshooting?

I once saw a control panel where, when all the internal cable tray covers were removed, spelled out 'HELP' in yellow wires against the rest, which were red. This was in a US Car Assembly Plant.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Only if use if you number them before terminating. And get it right, too.

[charles]

what's wrong with clip over numbers?

[Andy Burns]

And nobody is every tempted (or asked) to "just make it work for now, then make it neat again later" ...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Quite. They can be altered after installation too. Unlike the sleeve type.

[Dave Liquorice]

And how do you do that from a "faulty" network socket 2 floors away? Lift all the floor duct covers, clamber up and down the vertical cable shafts, etc etc. I don't think so.

Labeling is essential and has been said a database that says what should be connected to what via which cable. Some form of sensible "what" scheme helps a lot as well "F2R101P15" is on the second floor in room 101 port 15 (clockwise from the door (assuming only one door...)). Not sure of a sensible way to locate floor boxes, X and Y is obvious but how do you set the origin?

[jgh]

The server room?

All this shows the superiority of bus networks over radials ;)

jgh

[Tim Streater]

We just had a cable type followed by 5 digits. Such as FIB-12345. The database then told me which ports on which two devices were connected together.