Cable labeling in telecomm closet

Hello All,

I'm planning on organizing my racks with a little cable managment.

I was just wondering what type of labels and labels you use and prefer for cable labeling?

Right now all I have is a cheap Dymo labeler but my boss says he thinks this is a worthwhile effort and will spend a few $$ to get something decent.

Thanks for your replies and I do appologize if this is in the wrong forum.

~mocha

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Comments

cisco_trooper

I actually use the Dymo as well. It doesn't do too bad of a job. It has a cable wrap option which produces nice labels for cables. It repeats your label over and over for the entire length of the cable, allowing you to wrap the label around the cable, and read the label from any side of the cable.

Panzer919

I use a dynamo and a P-Touch labeler for my cables. When I worked for an ISP we had one that would print wide sideways labels that were clear on the ends so we could wrap them around the cables, made things nice.

In addition to labels I also try to color code cables. Like anything voice related will be green, anything going to and from our SAN is white. Between VERY detailed visio diagrams, labeling ports, labeling cables and color coding specific item groups it helps a lot when the crap hits the fan.

jibbajabba

DYMO Rhino 6000 is what we are using ...

tiersten

I use a P-touch label machine to print out any labels I need.

One thing about labeling cables is that you must make sure that its consistent and up to date which an immense task. I've been driven nuts before wondering why something doesn't work and it turns out that somebody grabbed a cable from somewhere with an existing label which wasn't ever changed.

I've given up on the idea of physically labeling ports with what is on the other end because its never accurate.

bertieb

tiersten wrote: »

I've given up on the idea of physically labeling ports with what is on the other end because its never accurate.

Same here. Had this exact issue yesterday evening under planned maintenance on an EMC SAN. Turns out the fibre cables were (physically) incorrectly labelled and explains why, when the EMC tech put them back in, only 1/2 the paths were visible from the hosts and all on the other storage processor. A simple error that only took a few minutes examining the switches/SAN to sort out but things like this are the main reason why I never trust physical labelling on cables.

I do like the Dymo labellers for labelling the kit though. Pretty good around the house as well i.e. fusebox etc