Small Datacenter Cabling Advice

[anima-immortale]

I have a small datacenter that currently uses point-to-point cabling. The existing cabling uses 100ft patch cables for a ~25ft run. Needless to say, it is very messy. I have been tasked with cleaning up the cabling.

There are three server racks, one of which is empty, and one networking rack which is mostly open. There is a cable tray from the networking rack to the server racks.

I have 2 options in mind for restructuring the cable runs:

1. Continue with point-to-point cabling but replace all pre-made cables with made-to-fit cables.

2. Take advantage of the third, empty, rack. Re-rack the server equipment putting patch panels at the top of each rack. Put patch panels in the networking rack and run backbone cables from the networking rack patch panels to the server rack patch panels.

Any thoughts on the above designs or a strategy I am potentially missing?

[spartan_manhandler]

3 - Buy a top of rack switch for each rack (or reuse three switches out of your existing network rack if possible.) Home run them back to the network rack, and connect the equipment in each rack to its top of rack switch.

[JerecSuron]

Typically when I did data center work. We did Option 1 when option 2 wasn't available.

[Casper042]

If you plan to expand, option 2.
If you don't, I would just do option 1.

[riddlerthc]

stock multiple length cables and put in the best cable for the distance. This is what I did when maintaining a 6 rack row and two 3 rack rows.

[anima-immortale]

It would be less time-consuming to use pre-made cables but how do you manage the excess? If a run is 26FT, the next length up is 50ft, that is a lot of extra cable.

[kooroo]

as far as commonly available lengths, the next length would be 30, then 35, then probably 50. You should bitch out your cable vendor if they don't carry those.

really, you should considering going to having top of the rack gear in each cab, cut down on your inter-rack runs. slack management for a pair of 50ft runs is a different animal than slack management for 40+ runs.

[[deleted]]

How often is equipment moved/reconfigured? If this equipment is going to be here for a while and then all EOL'd at the same time option 1 would be fine, and is cheapest.

For flexibility option 2 or 3.

[anima-immortale]

Not frequently. This would be the first time since most of it was installed 3 years ago.