Sometimes illustrating the way a job should *not* be done is a powerful educational tool. I have collected a gallery of messy and ridiculous cabling jobs:
http://gallery.colofinder.net/shameful-cabling
my favorite (not horrible, but funny):
http://gallery.colofinder.net/shameful-cabling/cables
Anonymous submissions can be sent to fnord@fnordsystems.com , equipment labels and faces will be blurred if requested.
Hello...
Sometimes illustrating the way a job should *not* be done is a powerful
educational tool. I have collected a gallery of messy and ridiculous
cabling jobs:
Maybe someone here has pictures of the meetme room at one wilshire from
the last several years. By far the messiest cabling I have ever seen in
any datacenter. (but it's getting better 
Christopher,
Hello...
Maybe someone here has pictures of the meetme room at one wilshire from
the last several years. By far the messiest cabling I have ever seen in
any datacenter. (but it's getting better
Someone did take some pictures and were posted today 
Christopher McCrory said:
Hello...
Sometimes illustrating the way a job should *not* be done is a powerful
educational tool. I have collected a gallery of messy and ridiculous
cabling jobs:Maybe someone here has pictures of the meetme room at one wilshire from
the last several years. By far the messiest cabling I have ever seen in
any datacenter. (but it's getting better
Someone in our office (who'll remain nameless) took these yesterday:
Another suggestion, although I'd be surprised to see it...anybody got
a shot from under PBI's datacenter floor when it was at 2nd and Folsom
in SF (across 2nd from SNFC21)? That was truely a work of art, quite
obvious that telco people who cut off plugs and leave cables under the
floor when they're done where there for quite a while...
John
Someone in our office (who'll remain nameless) took these yesterday:
What does this sign say?
And are we looking up, down, left, right... I just can't figure out what
this mess is:
Thanks for the chuckles.
Charles
Charles Sprickman said:
Someone in our office (who'll remain nameless) took these yesterday:
What does this sign say?
NOTICE
WHEN RUNNING FIBER THROUGH THIS UNIT, THERE MUST BE ENOUGH SLACK IN YOUR
CABLE TO WRAP HALF WAY AROUND THE BOTTOM OF THIS PULL BOX. IF YOUR CABLE
RUNS STRAIGHT ACROSS THE MIDSECTION WITH NO SLACK, THEN IT WILL BE REMOVED
FROM THE UNIT AT YOUR EXPENSE. YOUR COOPERATION IS APPRECIATED.
MMR MANAGEMENT
And are we looking up, down, left, right... I just can't figure out what
this mess is:
Looking up, into one of the smaller fiber trays.
Grant
Heh, its actually in SF21 now.
I got to see it a few months ago, I believe I saw 10 foot+ racks, packed
to the ceiling with gear.
There were step ladders everywhere...
Now that you've educated the world about messy cabling jobs that should _not_ be done,
perhaps you or someone else should now post _CLEAN_ cabling jobs that everyone should
follow examples of 
Thanks for the good pictures btw. Some of them are actually funny hehe
Always liked the work my fellow coworkers at Globix used to do - I don't
have any shots of SJC or NYC online (too bad - a few projects I went to
alot of trouble on to show the rest how it should be done 
), but
here's one of our demo panels from LHR:
http://thrashyour.com/lhr1-wiringdemo.jpg
And yeah, most of what was under the floors in all the DCs looked like
that, and yeah I hear for strict cat5 regs that they shouldn't be
velcroed together like that. Wire wraps were never used (only velcro),
bundles are laid down so that shortest is on the bottom side, longest
on the top.
John
haesu@towardex.com wrote:
Now that you've educated the world about messy cabling jobs that should _not_ be done,
perhaps you or someone else should now post _CLEAN_ cabling jobs that everyone should
follow examples of
Just a couple humble suggestions.
Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. wrote:
Richard Irving wrote:
Is that one really Cat. 5 compliant? (Tails out of the sheath look
too long one some of them.)
Routine "Spin Downs" created that (extended) Telco standard, we just
carried it over to Data structured wiring, as well.
:\
Whole lot prettier than some of the other pictures though.
>>http://new.onecall.net/timages/dsxcabling.jpg
Looks like an old-fashioned Western job--dint think anybody still
working knew how to do that.
8-)
Isn't it amazing how clean cabling in nearly empty collos and mmrs looks?
Alex
Now, we've seen a few pics of "good" cabling as well.
However, I'm forced to ask which kind of "good cabling" is possible in
a dynamic environment when you plug in/out, change, etc. the cables.
This seems to invariably lead to total chaos :-).
For example, consider the case of a patch panel of 200 plugs, where
you'd have to wire cables to 20 different physical locations (where
the switches/routers are)? How do you manage that elegantly, at the
patch panel side and the switch/router side?
I mean, it's fine if you take 100 cables, and wire them between the
patches and the switches (or the racks if you have the patch
cross-connect there) in bulk, but consider the case where you have 15
different switches (different subnets), a computer moving in/out of
the room in a daily basis etc. You can't just go around wiring like
http://thrashyour.com/lhr1-wiringdemo.jpg or
http://new.onecall.net/timages/cat5patch.jpg
How do you do good cabling in dynamic, real environments?
How do you do good cabling in dynamic, real environments?
It is not that difficult *if* the money is spent in a short term to make
sure that no ugly and silly stuff is crated in a longer(long) term.
Strategically pre-running certain parts of the facility with cat5/fiber to
minimize the "dynamic" portion of interconnect is a really good way to
reduce the mess.
Alex
Now, we've seen a few pics of "good" cabling as well.
However, I'm forced to ask which kind of "good cabling" is possible in
a dynamic environment when you plug in/out, change, etc. the cables.
This seems to invariably lead to total chaos :-).
You hire one wiring nazi. Never let them take vacation or sick time, and
make sure all changes go through them. If he needs help, you let him hire
and train his junior nazis.
How do you do good cabling in dynamic, real environments?
And keep the engineers out of there!
Pekka Savola wrote:
Now, we've seen a few pics of "good" cabling as well.
However, I'm forced to ask which kind of "good cabling" is possible in
a dynamic environment when you plug in/out, change, etc. the cables.
This seems to invariably lead to total chaos :-).
Just one opinion.....
If you have an operation with some discipline, in an environment
where the exercise of discipline is enabled by planning, forethought,
and the expenditure of more than the bare minimum needed to look like
you are on the air, it is easy.
That is somewhat like saying "If you get to the top of Mount
Everest, taking pictures of the Himilayas is easy.
My own 25 years of experience boil down to:
Try to plan for expansion as well as possible when designing,
then periodically start over and completely re-build the messy parts.
The period of starting over depends on the pain level of the planned
outages this may cause and the general pain caused by the state of things.
All clever plans I have seen in this area have not lasted more than about 2-3
years. It seems very difficult to predict where the growth is and how it
happens.
I admit this is a slightly cynical view but "such is life".
What I dread most, are situations where no-one takes the responsibility
for starting over when it is really necessary and everybody suffers.
Daniel
> How do you do good cabling in dynamic, real environments?
I find that no matter what you do, if there's more than one person touching
the cabling, then it ends up a mess, unless you're very strict about cabling
policy. Everyone has their pet way of running cat5 in a rack, and each one
individually looks nice, but you try to mix them and it looks a mess.
My pet hate is people who cable tie each cable run they do, especially on
overhead ladders. Every now and again, I end up going around with a pair of
wirecutters cutting out all the cableties. It's amazing how many you end up
with, even after 3-6 months in a fairly static environment (I wouldn't say
we're running cables more than once every week or two).
And worse than people who over-use cable ties, are the people who use cableties
and then roughly cut the end off at an angle. I've had more cuts from those
sharp ends, than anything else in a data centre. When I do it, I cut them all
flush, which makes them much more skin friendly.
Simon
You hide the spiders nest with lots of panduit covers?
Honestly, I think it comes down to two things: Planning before
implementation - you pre-wire your net gear to patch panels before it
goes into production; This keeps most hands off the back end stuff
except for the occasional test to verify that a patch is working. This
same planning goes into a second set of patch panels which you terminate
in the racks, that removes another major part of one-off cable pulls.
Rack server, crosconnect to top of rack, back to your patch panels,
cross connect to network patch panel, you're set.
Second part is, as mentioned, have some wiring nazis. I worked with a
guy a few years ago who kept spare cat 5 in labeled bins for 3', 6', and
12' lengths for red, blue, green and yellow colors. Each one was
wrapped a certain way without using ties so you could just reach in and
pull one out - He'd go mad if you just threw a cable back in there.
I still wrap my spare cables like that without even thinking about it.
You get one or two people like that who have pride in their datacenter,
and your issues are taken care of.
John
