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Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For Beautiful Network Cable Trays?
First time accepted submitter murpht2 writes "My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners. We're now engaged in a significant upgrade to our IT systems and we have a clash: the IT team leader wants to run network cable in trays hanging from the ceiling so all the client computers have high-speed access to the new servers; the guy in charge of the office design wants to keep things looking clean and the cable trays don't fit the bill. We're in a building made entirely of bricks and concrete, so we lack some of the between-the-wall spaces that are used in other settings. Any suggestions for beautiful cable trays or other alternatives?"
My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners.
My lame company only prides itself on stupid shit like making good products and pleasing its customers.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
the guy in charge of the office will love it, no wires. very pretty
If it's a small office, you can use Ethernet over power lines. I have not used it before, but it seems to be what you are looking for.
That being said, it's difficult to give up the 1000 Mb connections from modern ethernet cables, along with POE for phones, etc. The designer by not putting ethernet cables in place did your business a disservice. A secure business requires secure ethernet.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Buy typical cable trays, and 3D print some sort of fancy colorful casings for them. You can use a variety of designs and colors for aesthetic appeal. Plus even if it doesn't look all that great it will still be "cutting edge" technology in use, which will likely appeal to your business folks. Plus you can throw a 3D printer in your budget...
I might not bother trying to find beautiful trays, but instead find regular ones, then decorate!
Take something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003AU3HG6?ie=UTF8&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=B003AU3HG6&linkCode=shr&tag=preinheimerco-20&qid=1386087250&sr=8-5&keywords=wire+tray
Then put these underneath: http://www.whatisblik.com/shop/explore?theme=77
Turn your office ceiling into a pacman arena!
paul reinheimer
Did this same person complain over the HVAC system? The only way I'm aware of to get away from seeing cable trays is false floor or false ceiling. If you don't have that option, your only choice is to try to make the cable trays "pretty", which is more or less making it look like the HVAC with large metal trays... it's up to you if you want solid or mesh, and you could probably paint them... You could also get creative with panduit for running down support beams or walls, just integrate the colors and make sure the panduit is thick enough to accomodate more than you currently have, running new wire is a pain in the ass.
Use brightly colored cables, get metal cable tray and rattle can spray paint it a contrasting color. I've seen it done very well, and it does add a near technical feel to a space.
Any interior designer could help you; if you're going for image, then that's probably not a bad idea anyway.
If you're not going for image.. drop tile. :)
..don't panic
They're both right: The network guy about trays being a great solution, and the office designer about trays being butt-ugly.
However, why not work some type of panelling below, rising to the sides of the trays? I'm not a designer by far, but is seems to me that
hiding the trays cannot be exceptionally difficult, and can be done with much freedom of style. And all of that should be open from the top,
and far enough from the ceiling to keep easy access.
Next, the cables coming down. The covering should accomodate cabledrops without these having to "spill over", and in a way that keeps them very accessible. simple holes? Also, the cables themselves could be surrounded by some spiral or other form, lending them style and possibly even some strength. The spiral could even be strung between the casing and the desk, making it an active element of design, rather than a trick to 'hide the ugly cable'.
the panelings could be cut/painted in a themes shape/color, of be kept elegantly simple, depending on the design of the surrounding office.
-f
You do have office pets, right? Just give them a collar with clips that hold SD cards, then train them to go to the server room and fill up the cards with data and return them to you.
Latency is a little high, but bandwidth can be pretty good - as they say, never underestimate the bandwidth of a Golden Retriever with a collar full of SD cards.
Some years ago when I moved my company into a new office and wanted to keep the cost down, I installed rain gutters (and occasional downspout) on the walls inside to run telephone and ethernet. It was inexpensive compared to official cable trays and hid the wiring nicely.
Gutters are standard architectural details and since they are very visible you can find nice looking designs and colors.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Simple: Ditch the servers and move to cloud. Then fire all your IT staff and replace them with contractors from India.
1. No need to work about the aesthetics of the server room.
2. Your office will now have additional space with the removal of all that ugly looking IT equipment.
3. Your managers will no longer have to listen to petty arguments by the IT workers.
4. You company will save money by hiring cheap IT workers from India.
Its a WIN-WIN situation for everyone!
You can get really nice industrial cable trays. Mount them high enough that they aren't immediately noticeable but they maintain that industrial and exposed look.
The good ones are powder coated so you can get a colour of your choice to match the office.
Use a tool called a cable comb when you are running the cables to put the cables into very straight and neat bundles.
Here is the manufacturer of a good quality system for cable trays:
http://wiremaidusa.com/
(they have many resellers. Your cabling contractor likely deals with a supplier who can get this)
Here is the cable comb tool for making straightened bundles of cables that look neat in they tray:
http://www.acomtools.com/
If you want something more enclosed then you can go to full conduit installation using metal pipes. The pipes can then be painted to match your ceiling colour.
"My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners."
I'm happy for you that your office is pretty. But where do you go when you need to stop "collaborating" and get some actual work done? Or when the group at the bench across from yours is "collaborating" so loudly that your group can't hear each other talk?
Open floor plans may be great for some jobs, but they are poison for work that requires concentration, especially when that work also entails remote collaboration. If you find this isn't true, I'd like to hear more -- especially about how you handle conference-call participation when there's a loud discussion nearby.
(Yeah, I know I'll take an "off-topic" hit to my karma for this. Sorry; it's a hot button at the moment.)
NO NO NO NO NO. Wifi is not a direct replacement for wire, its just not. Wifi should be supplemental to the network, not the basis for the network. If you are choosing wifi for aesthetics in a business setting, you are in the wrong line of work.
Good-bye
You might want to get some inspiration from reddit / imgur cableporn sections.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I'd second the recommendation for a CNC shop. Anodized aluminum, whatever color you want, or if anodizing isn't up to snuff, powder coating, or having it dipped.
Your choice of shapes, fasteners, how things attach. Combine this with pairs of holes for zip ties, and it will be a fairly neat server room.
Another thing I've seen was fiber optic multiplexers that would take a rack of 10gigE signal, run it along one fiber to a de-muxer near the router. That way, there is one, and only one network cable from each rack. If power is done so it comes from underneath (preferably 2+ PDUs), this will make things fairly tidy... well until people start stringing cable for their pet projects again.
A: Live, nude women.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Long back in a aeronautical facility (in India) I was surprised by the presence of toilet plungers in the corners of many rooms. When I asked one of the technicians he said, they are used to create the suction needed to pull up any tile on the floor, to access the crawl space below. Instead of providing trap doors at a few locations to get to the crawl space, these guys pull up any tile anywhere on the floor, reach in and grab the cables!
In USA if some one would make carpets or under-carpet padding that can accommodate cables without making the surface uneven on top, it would make a killing. Quick someone patent this.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My office has exposed cable trays. Some of the length has a toy model train running through it. Perhaps you can leave the exposed cable runs but spice it up with toy trains and hamster tubes?
Do you have electricity for the computers to use? If so, someone was once able to install wiring. Call that guy to install network wiring.