Biggest pet peeve regarding wiring closets/server rooms

I would like to think that all of us who are in this field are OCD about how the cables are sorted.

Do you get turned off by "spaghetti" rooms?!

I can't stand unorganized rooms.

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Comments

the_Grinch

I never had an issue with it, but only because I was never great with organizing things. I like to think I am ordered chaos, it looks like a mess, but it's my mess and I know where everything is

That being said, for the important things I make every effort to keep it organized. But if I were to say the one thing I hate the most is large cables being used for short runs in the closet. Nothing worse then walking in and tracing a 14 ft cable when a much shorter one could have been used!

MAC_Addy

Count me in on this.

I really hate messy server rooms and will do my best to make it look pretty. Though, be careful when doing this. When I worked for a school district, one of our newest technicians came in over the weekend and decided to make it "better". Little did he know that a couple of my L3 switches were setup with routes to specific areas... That was a fun Monday.

FloOz

the_Grinch wrote: »

I never had an issue with it, but only because I was never great with organizing things. I like to think I am ordered chaos, it looks like a mess, but it's my mess and I know where everything is That being said, for the important things I make every effort to keep it organized. But if I were to say the one thing I hate the most is large cables being used for short runs in the closet. Nothing worse then walking in and tracing a 14 ft cable when a much shorter one could have been used!

my pet peeve right there

the_Grinch

One weekend we did some rewiring and it was still a mess, but better. Everything looked good and we didn't get one complaint of any network issues. A few days later someone said they couldn't print to one of the network printers. Forgetting about the rewiring, I did some troubleshooting. Nothing was working and my boss says normally we have to reboot the server when that happens. So I walk a half mile to the server room and reboot the server (you can't remote into the device for some reason). Reboot, try to print, and still nothing. Finally I try to ping the printer and find out it does not respond. Walk back up and wedged in the nest was the unplugged cable

epic fail!

X10MMX

I would actually die inside if I ever walked into a server room like this...

server-room.jpg

swild

X10MMX wrote: »

I would actually die inside if I ever walked into a server room like this...

I refuse to walk into that room. If I had to do any sort of troubleshooting at all, I would make a lot of people have a bad day.

Roguetadhg

Our main server room is a mess. Although, it was nice, at one point.

Due to gouging every little bit of money i'm stuck with too many patch panels, not enough switches, and computers that need to be moved around.

Moving computers, unplugging patch panels from switches to make connections for new clients. Relatively high turn over rate of clients. I gave up trying to have a neat room. :P

jamesleecoleman

The place I worked at used envelope labels. They fell off over time so it was really difficult or impossible to trace back the cable without unplugging the cable. So in a way, I guess the wiring was unorganized.

MAC_Addy

swild wrote: »

I refuse to walk into that room. If I had to do any sort of troubleshooting at all, I would make a lot of people have a bad day.

Likewise for me. Though, if you were getting paid by the hour, that'll be a great money-maker

Jasiono

X10MMX wrote: »

I would actually die inside if I ever walked into a server room like this...

Oh my. That makes me cringe.

Devilry

This is one of my largest pet peeves. I commented on it to the manager when interviewing, I am nearly the end of my several month project of re-wiring. It makes me happy to have clean, tight and labeled wiring

MAC_Addy

Does anyone else get that 'fresh' feeling when a server room/closet is properly cabled and bundled? Or am I the only freak?

DevilWAH

I am not one for a surgical clean network room, and to OCD to the point (as I have seen) of cutting each cable to exact length and indvual clipped each one to the cable trays.

In my view there should be no rack to rack patching, and the core devices should be housed in separate racks with tidy cable.

My main issue with untidy cables is when people use to short a cable and put it across the front of a switch, or run a cable in the 1 u space between two switches that I had left for free for a new device. Meaning to carry out any wok I have to un-patch some thing. All very well if it is just a users PC, but is always a core link they do it with.

I don't care for labled cables, most peopl use some dymo labels and after 2 months he slightets touch and they fall off.

In the server room all switch ports have descriptions assigned with patch panel details. So no mater how messy the cables are, i can walk up to ant pot and know exactly where it is linked to.

blargoe

I am not OCD about it but I want everyone to follow commonly accepted standard practices.

My IS director is extremely OCD. He walked in our server room late one afternoon and noticed two new boxes in the corner containing new servers had recently been moved to the room. These servers were delivered here by our receiving department... and they were to be racked up the next morning. He insisted that the boxes needed to be moved to a designated storage area immediately... two buildings away, a little less than 1/2 mile... because the server room is not to be used for "storage".

THAT level of OCD is a "server room" pet peeve of mine.

bigdogz

I had the same type of boss. Then we had to fall into compliance where anything inside or outside of the racks could not catch fire. Any sort of paper or documentation had to be removed.

SouthSeaPirate

X10MMX wrote: »

I would actually die inside if I ever walked into a server room like this...

OMG! An Intertel system! LOL

In all seriousness, ours was WAY worse. I have made major improvements, but unfortunately still bad. And that is my peeve; working so hard and you cant even tell. Pretty much nothing else I can do but take the whole building down and rewire every line. All the drops coming in are all wrapped around each others bundle. Not to mention the main rack is between the two rows of racks. So basically everything must be done while standing next to the patch panel; I can never get into the front or rear by standing, I can only lean in.

Keener

I definitely hate to see server rooms a mess. A "clean and tidy rack" is so much nicer to look at!

I just got back from a network integration between STL and Iowa. Their room was a mess too. A few things complicated it:
* all their IT support was 3rd party billable per hour
* I think the company was cheap in some regards and just wanted function rather than "right"
* I can't remember my other thought

This was the first time, though, where I had been in a server room that didn't really use patch panels. Just network cable runs. So when I was tracing out a drop from the first floor to the server room, there was just a long Cat5 cable run from the 1st floor down to the basement (don't ask) and then up to the server room on the 2nd floor. After identifying the correct cable, I pull the cable from switch to move it to another. Very hard to keep this mess organized since you can't change the cables!

Roguetadhg

Keener, why did the cable go to the basement if the final destination is the 2nd floor?

JohnnyBiggles

themagicone

I deal with it. Few weeks ago I was doing a large network refresh project and one of the IDF's had no patch panels. It was all just unlabled drops from who knows where. I spent 3 hours reworking the cables to make it look somewhat neater with new switches. Still looked like crap. Well they starting getting on me how bad it looks and I was like "well if you don't like it let me get you some patch panels and proper cable management" Guess who spent the next 6 hours punching down 200+ drops?

So forgot to add the rest of the story. Got it all patched out, nice short patch cables, looked real neat. Monday comes, "#### We need X devices on the old network (we built out an entirely new network and moved everything to it. The old network was still active but we removed the connection to it in this particular IDF)". Few tense hours and I have one of the old switches connected to the old network in the IDF. My nice cabling and tidness went out the window. It was a mess.

Keener

Part of it had to do with where the "closet" was, under a staircase. Not only did it go downstairs, it snaked the opposite direction of the server room first. I think the overall run comes out to just over 200' per cable. It was also an old building and a lot of the wiring was done before a remodel in the 90s. Even the guys who ran 3 new drops to extend the MPLS and phone system from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor (not following the previous route either) hated doing the run! It is my understanding the Demarc was downstairs, but not everything needs to go by there.

Qord

While I don't like messy rooms, my only real pet peeve is when people change something in one of my closets and either don't put it back or don't tell me. In my building we do a lot of conference calls, and not every room has a dedicated phone line. This means someone is constantly "moving" a phone number from room to room. While this itself isn't an issue, them not puting things back how they found them is driving me crazy. If you unplug something for a temporary situation, put it back when you're done or tell me so I can do it.

joehalford01

My rack is a mess, there is always time to "fix" something, but never enough time to actually organize it for long term gain. Frustrating!

Roguetadhg

I guess, if anything - My real pet peeve is when a wiring closet is located where it can't be locked. Further more, where the security camera computer is managed and unlocked. The room is the "Paper" room. I've fought (and lost, multiple times) about keeping the door locked. Worse still, building managers don't care and say it's an inconvenience.

rsutton

It irritates me when servers are not labeled, it irritates me even more when servers are labeled incorrectly.