Steven E. Crider Homepage

Click on a thumbnail below to view the larger image.

Each image will automatically open in a new browser window to save you from having to keep reloading the thumbnails when jumping back and forth.

Okay, here's the deal... when three offices merged into one 'new' building last year, I inherited a certain amount of existing IT infrastructure. While not all bad, it did mean I had to make due with equipment racks and patch panels that were already in place. Because things were so crazy, I 1) didn't have the cables I needed to do it right and 2) didn't have time to order or use the cables in order to do it right. We were really swamped during the move. So, I resigned myself to the fact that we needed to just get everything working and then we could go back later and clean everything up. Not the ideal way to do things, but I didn't have much choice at the time.

That's what this is basically all about. My going back and getting the rack all nice and rewired. It took several hours to get this much done, and there's still more to do. But, the worst of it has been cleaned up and that's the most important thing.

All images in this batch are <130k in size.

Before:
Below are three shots before the reconfig. Notice the lack of any kind of standard or plan. We simply used what was already on-hand. Yuck!





After:
Below are three shots after the reconfig. There's still some clean-up work to do, and there are a few straggling cables that need to be tidied up, but all-in-all, I'm very happy with the result.



We used specific cable colors for first- and second-floor workstations, as well as specific colors for printers and servers. We even replaced all the old, crappy cable management panels with new ones. The old ones had, I kid you not, the sharpest points on the cable guides I've ever seen. Who in their right mind designs a cable management guide with a sharp point? All you have to do is run a cable over that point and it's ruined. Fools.
I'm still planning to use panels on the bottom of each rack to clean up and hide the lower cabling, as well as maybe some enclosures between the racks.
A ton of thanks to John and Andy for all their hard work on this project.