Cable Management Training powerpoint .pptx

cable management

1. Cable Management

2. One of the first things that should be taken care of in a server rack after mounting all of your equipment is cable management. If you don’t have a good cable management strategy in place, not only will your racks will look unorganized, but it can make maintenance complicated and obstruct airflow. With this in mind, it is a good idea to learn about effective cable management strategies to help ensure all your cables are run properly to ensure a clean and safe rack environment Cable Management

3. Importance of cable management Ease of Use One of the most important reasons to invest in a high quality cable management solution has to do with providing you and your employees easy access to not only the cables themselves, but to the devices that they’re connected to. If the cables running to and from the various devices you’re trying to maintain become tangled and interconnected, it will take a significantly longer amount of time to make sense of it all. This can lead to decreased efficiency and simple tasks like swapping out a hard drive taking much longer than they really should. It is important for wires and cables to be organized and color coding is a great way to know which cables are designated for certain tasks and plug ins. For example, Ethernet cables tend to be green.

4. Importance of cable management Troubleshooting One of the first steps to troubleshooting a piece of electronic equipment always involves testing the data transfer cable to make sure that it is still in good working order. Such a simple task becomes infinitely more complex if you’re looking at dozens (or in certain cases hundreds) of tangled cables that are in disarray. The ability to easily swap out cables, quickly access the cables you need to maintain, troubleshoot hardware and perform other basic tasks is another one of the many reasons why data center cable management is so important.

5. Importance of cable management Fire Safety Another important reason to think about data center cable management has to do with fire safety. If cables become tangled and are not properly managed, they are much more likely to lead to sparks and even a fire if the situation is left unchecked for a long enough period of time. Likewise, someone could walk near a bundle of cables, trip and yank a cable out of its socket. This could also lead to a fire or even damaging the equipment that cable was connected to. Another issue for you the employer, then becomes LNI claims from people injuring themselves by tripping on cables that are not properly managed and left in a rat’s nest of a mess.

6. Run to the Side First One common mistake people make when first using a server rack is running their cables directly out of the hardware to either the top or bottom of the rack itself. This may seem to make sense at first since that is the most direct path to where the cables are going, but over time it will become a big mess. As servers and other hardware are added and removed, the cables will get tangled and difficult to manage. The solution to this is to always run cables out of the hardware, and immediately over to the edge of the rack. Once the cables are to the edge, they can be bundled together using horizontal rack organizers. These items bundle all the cables together while they are running either down into the floor (in a raised floor environment), or up into the ceiling (in an environment where wires are run through the ceiling), or even just to another piece of hardware.

7. Keep the Cables Snug Loose cables can easily be caught on things, tangled up, and cause all sorts of trouble. Running the cables in such a way so that they are kept nice and snug from beginning to end is a great way to ensure everything remains organized. This often means running the cable from the source to the destination, cutting it to the required length, and then adding on the proper cable end. While it will take a little more work up front, it works much better in the long term.

8. Color Code Your Cables Whether you have one server rack with one piece of hardware in it, or you manage a major data center, you always want to have color coded cables. There are a few different options when it comes to choosing what each color is for: •Cable Type – Having one color for CAT5, one for Fiber, and so on, will make it easy to determine the type of cable with just a glance. •Cable Purpose – Using a specific color for internal wiring, wiring to go to user equipment, and wiring that goes outside of the building can be an effective strategy, especially in some larger areas. •Cable Destination – For some buildings, it makes sense to have cables color coded based on which floor or office area they are going to. There is no single correct way to do the color coding, other than making sure there is a set strategy that is always being followed. Think about your specific situation and needs, and try to use color coding to reduce confusion and improve organization within the racks and beyond.

9. Always Label Both Ends of a Cable Having a good label printer in the data center or computer closet is absolutely essential to ensuring good rack cable management. Using the label printer to print off small labels that can be attached to both ends of every cable will help to ensure everyone is able to easily see where each cable is going. This can be invaluable when attempting to troubleshoot an outage. It is also very helpful when trying to remove extra cables after a hardware upgrade. The bottom line for all rack cable management strategies is that it is important to really think everything through ahead of time, and be willing to put in the work during the initial installation. If this is done, a good server rack will remain clean and easy to manage for years to come.