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Also make sure to hire someone who has done it before if you want to go that route. "Racking" is an art-form in itself and the cabling alone can turn into a rea

by moe 15y ago

Also make sure to hire someone who has done it before if you want to go that route. "Racking" is an art-form in itself and the cabling alone can turn into a real problem[1] down the road if you take it too lightly for too long. You also want to plan for redundancy, power density etc. from the start. Sorting out messy cabling or adding redundancy to a badly managed rack on live hardware is not fun. [1] http://www.vibrant.com/cable-messes.php http://www.vibrant.com/cable-messes.php (for reference, this is what it should look like: http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/01/24/when-data-center-cabling-becomes-art/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/01/24/when-data-center-cabling...)

CamperBob 15y ago
Not a huge fan of zipties, honestly... there's a point where it's less trouble to just pull the cable and see what it's attached to, especially since we all get lazy when it comes to labeling our source/dest endpoints. Most of the shots of "cable messes" don't really look that unacceptable to me. I don't complain about messy cables until they start to look more like http://static.cray-cyber.org/General/LARGE/Cyber_860_BP_Skyscraper.JPG http://static.cray-cyber.org/General/LARGE/Cyber_860_BP_Skys... .
- moe 15y ago
  Matter of pain threshold I guess. Personally I prefer spending the odd hour on tidy zipping and labeling (yes, both ends of the cable) over cable-pulling during an emergency at 4am...
  - caw 15y ago
    As a matter of opinion I use zipties for permanent cables (tray runs, other mostly fixed cabling), and velcro ties for in-rack where they're more likely to be updated. But then again zip ties are cheap and it's sometimes just easier to cut them off then mess with the velcro.
    - moe 15y ago
      Indeed, when I wrote "zipping" I actually meant velcro. We're doing it pretty much the same way (in some racks we even have a velco-strip on the side as "parking zone").
- daydream 15y ago
  Don't use zipties as much as possible. A roll of velcro cable ties cut to length is much easier to handle and reconfigure.

by moe 15y ago

CamperBob 15y ago

Not a huge fan of zipties, honestly... there's a point where it's less trouble to just pull the cable and see what it's attached to, especially since we all get lazy when it comes to labeling our source/dest endpoints. Most of the shots of "cable messes" don't really look that unacceptable to me. I don't complain about messy cables until they start to look more like http://static.cray-cyber.org/General/LARGE/Cyber_860_BP_Skyscraper.JPG http://static.cray-cyber.org/General/LARGE/Cyber_860_BP_Skys... .

moe 15y ago
Matter of pain threshold I guess. Personally I prefer spending the odd hour on tidy zipping and labeling (yes, both ends of the cable) over cable-pulling during an emergency at 4am...
- caw 15y ago
  As a matter of opinion I use zipties for permanent cables (tray runs, other mostly fixed cabling), and velcro ties for in-rack where they're more likely to be updated. But then again zip ties are cheap and it's sometimes just easier to cut them off then mess with the velcro.
  - moe 15y ago
    Indeed, when I wrote "zipping" I actually meant velcro. We're doing it pretty much the same way (in some racks we even have a velco-strip on the side as "parking zone").
daydream 15y ago
Don't use zipties as much as possible. A roll of velcro cable ties cut to length is much easier to handle and reconfigure.