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Thread: Advice on tidying this lot....

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    Jay
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    Advice on tidying this lot....



    I have done a lot of cable tidy jobs before but never anything like this (this is just one of many like this) and this is the only time I have had no down time to be able to do it in. I would normally do a Switch / switch port / patch port diagram and strip all the cables out but I don't have that "luxury" this time!

    I just vacuumed about 5 dead spiders and other dead things out of this as well!
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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Take off and nuke it from orbit , its the only way to be sure.

    Are the patches all serving the same purpose or are some for data and some for voice etc ? Getting plenty of correctly colours patch cables would certainly help.
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    ALT0153™ Rob_B's Avatar
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Kill it, kill it with fire....

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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of cable ties!

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    Jay
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    Take off and nuke it from orbit , its the only way to be sure.

    Are the patches all serving the same purpose or are some for data and some for voice etc ? Getting plenty of correctly colours patch cables would certainly help.
    some is VoIP (with POE) on its own VLAN some are standard data. I intend to do what I always do (as you said) colour the cables so we know what the hell they are for, I really need to tidy it up but to do that I would need to strip the thing out and that can't be done. I may just untangle it all by pulling them one by one, they will only be out for a second then pluged back in. Once I have done that I can start to work out how to tidy it up and colour code it.

    Right now it takes about 5 mins to trace a cable!
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    grrr double post - need more caffeine!

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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Quote Originally Posted by b0redom View Post
    Replace it with a wireless box?*
    * this is not a serious suggestion

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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Last time I had to deal with that level of knitting , I had to do a similar approach - its painful and nasty
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    I think trying to untangle one cable at a time will drive you to insanity, you just end up untangling it from one place then find it wrapped around something else later on.

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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Are they is use 24/7? i.e. could it not be sorted by doing a graveyard shift (overnight)

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    Jay
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    nope, 24/7 sadly.
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    It can't be done without any down time, as you will need to unplug and plug cables, it might be small enough that most don't notice however its always a risk. I notice there are few cable bars in it so its going to be difficult to do, if you were wiring fresh you could make a line many of cables however there is nothing to support it single cables would just join the mess again. You could replace every cable with a very long one, that would allow to you stretch everything anyway from the surface of the rack (logging positions as you do it), then could could install close fitting cables neat cables.If you have any spare U, I would shuffle the stuff so you have space for more wiring bars.
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    ɯʎɔɐɹsɐʌʍ mycarsavw's Avatar
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Jay, the solution is simple, close the cabinet door and let someone else discover it at a later date and then you can use fake surprise to express your disgust as you wander off leaving them to sort it out.

    That method has worked for me for many things over the years


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    Jay
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    I wish that I could do that!

    I am going to start mapping out the switch port numbers to patch port numbers and see if I can get this done. I will have to tell people that there is going to be some down time but I hope it will only be a few seconds per port. The backbone of this network is fibre so as long as I don't mess up the uplink ports I think all should be fine.

    I don't know why but everytime I get a new job I always have to start again with the patch cabling.
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    Get cable management brackets for your rack (the horizontal ones as well as they ones that go on the side), document existing ins/outs of each cable and replace one by one with the right length/colour scheme.

    I've done that on few occasions and its a royal pain in the **** however once done you have only yourself do blame if it goes to mess again.

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    Jay
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    Re: Advice on tidying this lot....

    I have made a full patch number / patch port number to switch / switch port number plan now, it took 3 hours and this is the smallest by far. It feels good to get started though.

    Sadly the only cable management the last guy used was the stupid dell server arms that I never install due to them blocking the air flow out the back of the server.
    Last edited by Jay; 18-08-2010 at 10:57 PM.
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