Here are 5 tips for keeping patch panel fields tidy. For those technicians out there that could use a little advice: Here is a two-minute video posted to YouTube by Cisco Systems. This video walks viewers through five steps they can take to reduce or eliminate patch-cord clutter in data centers. The video is narrated by Douglas Alger, an IT architect for Cisco. (See books on data center energy efficiency authored by Douglas Alger.)
Here is a job that World Telecom & Surveillance technicians completed for Caltrans/Butte County……we follow the same tips that Douglas Alger suggests…
BEFORE
AFTER
Alger suggests the following steps for keeping cabling neat and tidy:
1. Make sure that you are planning for the correct amount of wire management when designing your data center.
2. Be sure to use correct lengths of patch cords when making connections. Alger advises: “Don’t just allow hardware installers to grab a fistful of 8-foot cables and use them everywhere, leaving excess cable length to either hang free or be tucked away in wire management.”
3. Make sure that your data center has multiple lengths of network cable in stock.
4. Try to make sure patch cords are prewired into data center networking rows. This is much more efficient rather than waiting for those rows to be filled with hardware, “and cabling on a piecemeal basis later,” Alger says.
5. Patch cords need to be streamlined in the data center through hardware choices. Virtualization, for example, allows more computer power with fewer physical servers and, therefore, less network cabling.