A Tidy, Maintainable Cabinet Wiring Methodology?

mawhin asks: "I've seen a couple of articles highlighting readers' favourite tidy/untidy cabling, and conversations along the lines of 'I always do my cabling *real* tidy' / 'yeah but how can you change stuff when everything is zip tied down'. 'Use velcro not zip ties' is obviously a good tip, but what I'd really like to know is how you all do it. My particular situation involves multiple racks of switches next to racks of patch panels. What methodology would you recommend for installation and ongoing change to ensure that stuff is tidy enough to be able to trace cable; isn't so tight the you can't re-patch without stripping big chunks of cabling out; and the arrangement doesn't inevitably deteriorate?"

Comments

There are ways to keep wiring racks tidy

[Anonymous Coward]

There are ways to keep wiring racks tidy but few do it.

Some hints:

• Leave some space, it might be a nice feat of engineering to pack 2" diameter cable bundle in a 2" space but thats too tight. Want the next cable run to be in there neat then leave some space, at least 3 times what is going in up front.
• If you might expand, leave even more space.
• Smaller bundles logically grouped. Putting everything in one big bundle makes it harder to work with. There is picture tidy and practical tidy, you want the later.
• Pre-wire and provision all you can right up front to reduce add ons and mess grow. EVEN if it means potentially dead cable. Costs more in the short term but less that the long term. This eliminates the costs and needs to rip open the bundles every month for 10 years.
• Before hiring someone, see their work. Ya, the other guy is cheaper but doesn't put the cables in tidy...
• Specify in contracts (internal or external) that tidy inspections, not just functional specifications as need to be met before the job is considered done.
• Realise the proportion of tidyness in the rack is proportionate to the quality planning. In fact, to know how organized a place is, ask to see their rackspace.
• Add and use hooks along side the raceways just for new cable. When the hook gets full, bundle it off to the side. This is so your not forever rebundling cable.
• Consider a distributed model where all the cable is decentralized in smaller chunks with high speed uplinks. "One Big Mother" switch is often one big mother mess no one wants to touch.
• Get management support for policies on above. You may need to rectify an admin who just throws a cable over in a disorganized way, make them follow up and do it right.

Panel to Switch Tip

[ddillman]

Ever notice that most switches group their ports in 4 or 6 to a group? What I do in these cases is bundle my patch cables in that same number between the panel and switch. makes it much easier to trace one when you can locate the small bundle, then isolate the specific cable. I usually just used the same twist ties that the patch cables came packaged in, but you could also use velcro. I was just being frugal. In most cases, I tied the bundles together in at least 3 points along the length of the bundle, assuming they're all going to the same panel and switch. Kept the bundles neat. I typically routed the small bundles using cable management panels on the racks that came equipped for it (all of them, after I started specifying).

It's not photo-pretty, but it is practical, very easy to modify at need. Some of those photo racks I'd be afraid to mess with for fear of having to try to return it to that state!

Numbers at each end

[tsstahl]

Quality appearance is a bit more expensive. Realize this and accept it.

Buy the patch cables that are serialized at each end.

Buy THE CORRECT LENGTH patch cables.

Use Velcro, never zip ties.

Always leave room for expansion.

Color code. We use green exclusively for telecom (TDM, and VOIP), Blue for standard jacks, etc. NEVER violate color coding, even though it is incredibly tempting to do so.