First Server Room Cabling Job

tobsmonster2

tobsmonster2

tobsmonster2

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Joined
6 May 2011
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248
Location
London
Hi all,

Hope you're all having a lovely holiday period :).

I was asked to re-cable a couple cabinets and re-rack some of the servers at one of my companies clients (pics below).

This was my first time doing cabling outside of a gaming PC and I'd like to hear what you all think :).

A couple of things to note about the job:
- I'd never seen the site before, and had to make do with the cables we had on-site.
- The red cables required 1 to 1 patching, so I had to note where they went into on the switch and on the patchpanel and make sure they went back the same way.
- I was allowed to move the servers and firewall around, but the patchpanels and switches had to stay as they were.

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...and finally:

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Also, it took around 12 hours to get everything done including noting the port numbers, preparing lengths of cable, removing doors, patching etc... Is that a reasonable time to complete a job like this? I don't want to get into a bad habit of doing this slowly if I should be doing it faster :rolleyes:.

Best wishes,

tobs.
 
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Id say for that mess of a cabling that's about right if your working alone. Looks nice and tidy. Are those cables numbered?

If I was being really anal id say the yellow cables shouldn't go over devices and should go off to the side.
 
ah man! nice work but i wish people would stop installing patch panel, patch panel, patch panel, patch panel, patch panel. Bloody lazy.

The real way is patch panel, switch, patch panel, switch e.t.c so that small half mtr patch cables can be used.
 
mrbell1984 said:
ah man! nice work but i wish people would stop installing patch panel, patch panel, patch panel, patch panel, patch panel. Bloody lazy.

The real way is patch panel, switch, patch panel, switch e.t.c so that small half mtr patch cables can be used.
Click to expand...

That doesn't always work. In fact this is a good example of why. You can't always assume every patch panel will be full or even have anything patched to it...
 
DRZ said:
That doesn't always work. In fact this is a good example of why. You can't always assume every patch panel will be full or even have anything patched to it...
Click to expand...

I'd love to be able to do this too, but unfortunately we contend patch ports to switch ports. It would cost us a fortune to have unused switchports. Plus you can't do it on chassis switches such as the 4510's. The best we can do is cable management, switch, cable management and repeat for the patch panels.
 
Thanks for all the positive comments guys :) it's greatly appreciated!

@matthab
I was with two colleagues, but they were cracking on with the servers while I did the patching work. As you can see in second picture, the guys who'd been here previously didn't actually rack any of the servers and instead installed a tray and stacked all the servers on top of one another :eek:.

Only managed to get labels on the cables coming from the servers in the end :(. Just didn't have enough time for the rest.

@mrbell1984
They had this set up in a college I worked in last year and I've got to say it's probably one of the best cabling set ups I've come across. The only downside I saw was that the bunches of short cables meant some of the cabs could never be closed :D.

Thanks again for all the comments guys and Merry Christmas.
 
Hmm... these go from rack patch panel to end of row patch panels (shown in pic) which then can go to middle of lab patch panels. Then to destination rack.... or something like that :p

I hate cabling...linking devices between one side of the lab to the other also annoys me, takes so long!
 
That's much neater however I have to say that the yellow cables are a big no-no as they are basically going across the switch below where they are plugged into. If you had a failure on the bottom switch and needed to replace it you may need to unplug all the yellow ones in the switch above. This might take down many more devices and servers and compound the existing issue.
 
pdw8 said:
That's much neater however I have to say that the yellow cables are a big no-no as they are basically going across the switch below where they are plugged into. If you had a failure on the bottom switch and needed to replace it you may need to unplug all the yellow ones in the switch above. This might take down many more devices and servers and compound the existing issue.
Click to expand...

This is the main thing, you need to be able to swap any device without unplugging another (easily preferably). Try not to cable across other devices...
 
bigredshark said:
This is the main thing, you need to be able to swap any device without unplugging another (easily preferably). Try not to cable across other devices...
Click to expand...
The top 'switches' are actually one single device (fairly old model IIRC) so it doesn't matter too much in this situation :p.
As each server had two NIC's, the most important thing was making sure each one got connected to a different 'module' on the switch to give some redundancy.
I will bare that in mind though, because if I'm honest I really only went for what I thought would look cleanest.
 
Nice work, I'd recommend you setup a numbering system for each cable/system.. It aids quite well in fault finding etc etc.
 
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