Slashdot Mirror

"While of course it's possible to produce a very neat cable layout when all cables are built to the exact length required, it's a lot faster, and generally cheaper, to use manufactured cables. But then you're left with the problem of what to do with various small coils of cable."

If we're talking intra-rack, I've built racks with both manufactured cables and custom lengthed cables and while custom lengthed is obviously much cleaner and nicer it's quite a bit of work to build at least 3x cable for each server (2x NIC + HP's iLO or w/e OOB management you're using). And if we're talking an average of 20 servers per rack that's at least 60 cables with connectors on both ends for a total of 120 crimps - ouch. We 1U use top-of-rack switches, usually 3, one for each NIC and one for iLO.

But, for manufactured cables, just find those vertical cable organizers that you can mount to rack itself, then just take your slack up there.

That's exactly what I meant by ladder racking (or cable runways, or whatever the kids are calling it these days). Yes, the part that you can see looks better with a raised floor, but it sucks so much to run cable under a floor that that's all anyone ever does - no one ever organizes or cleans under there. Sure, they'll take a wet/dry vac to it after an A/C accident, but they won't go back under if they remember they forgot a can of soda pop down there. It'll sit there until the fruit flies eat it all up.

My favorite thing for patch panels/switches is to put them on separate horizontally adjacent racks. A cable goes up from the patch panel to the cable management bracket, over to a gap between the racks, forms a U where all of the slack is stored, then goes into cable management again and then down to its switch port. It looks good with all of the slack in one place, it's easy to make changes, and you don't have cables running directly across the front of equipment (making it impossible to remove, or in some cases, inspect).

And if you do wall-mount the switches and patch panels, use a hinged rack (example) so you can get to the back of it. And of course, tell your cabler which side should be hinged so they'll be forced to use two extra brain cells to run the cable so it can be hinged.

Get a Paladin Toner and Probe (somewhere around $80) or something similar. Get your son/wife/trainedchimp to go through jacks plugging in the toner (cellphones help here; or just yell real loud) while you tone the cable to find which one is which.

Assuming you are putting these cables in a Patch panel you can just masking tape label them until you get them into their ports. Worst case is the tape comes off and you have to retone your wires (you didn't seem to have more than 30?). As for Making it look pretty just go with whatever cable management fits your budget and your mounting method. If it's in a basement and the stuff isn't gonna be bumped, you might as well go with an open relay rack bolted into your floor (you can hacksaw them down to size fairly easily since they are usually aluminum).

Supplied links are my personal hardware preferences . . .

Get a Paladin Toner and Probe (somewhere around $80) or something similar. Get your son/wife/trainedchimp to go through jacks plugging in the toner (cellphones help here; or just yell real loud) while you tone the cable to find which one is which.

Assuming you are putting these cables in a Patch panel you can just masking tape label them until you get them into their ports. Worst case is the tape comes off and you have to retone your wires (you didn't seem to have more than 30?). As for Making it look pretty just go with whatever cable management fits your budget and your mounting method. If it's in a basement and the stuff isn't gonna be bumped, you might as well go with an open relay rack bolted into your floor (you can hacksaw them down to size fairly easily since they are usually aluminum).

Supplied links are my personal hardware preferences . . .

Should have included this in the post.

Universal Cable Runway

It is relatively cheap and it's easy enough to install.

I had the thought of using these, but from working in a data center I can say that almost all equipment needs front and back support.

A better idea would be to just order the rails from a cabinet company, chatsworth for example, and just bolt those to the inside of a wooden frame with front and back supports.

Be sure to make the cabinet deep enough, many 1U servers are fairly deep and may end up hanging out the back of your cabinet if it's not deep enough.

The only time a relay rack would be acceptable would be for cobalts or something light like that, relay racks will work on them as they have no rear supports.