Every company in my IT career I have walked into a jungle of cables with no documentation or labels. I am starting to wonder if I will ever walk into a place where I don’t have to tear into everything and re-build from scratch. I realize that IT staff is usually overworked, but there is no excuse for letting it get this out of hand.
I admit, in a fire I don’t always label/run everything the proper way, but I always make sure I go back (usually late hours of night/wee hours of the morning, I love my job!) and make sure it is done right. I guess I should stop ranting and get back to the original subject of the post. Afterall, those Lazy IT admins keep people like me out of the unemployment line.
Until my most recent position, I have never dealt with a large switch like the Cisco 6509 or 96 port patch panels (the maker of these patch panels, IMO, should be shot). I am a big fan of what you can do with a good old fashioned 48 port switch, a Neatpatch and a 48 port patch panel. I was stumped when I walked into the IDF for the first time and saw this.
It is Cousin It with a bad dye job! You have to look close but you will find a Cisco 6509, 2x 96 port patch panels (other two are at the top) and 2x 24 Port Cisco 2970G switches. I had no idea where to start, so I fired up Google. The only thing that I could find for cable management for one of these beasts was the SMB-6509 from CE COM. It looked great and had some awesome functionality. With no budget for the cleanup there was no way I was going to get approval for the $300 – $400 price tag and the other cable management I needed to finish the job (original estimate was around $2,000). So I jumped on Insight.com and started to look around. I found some nice inexpensive items that looked like they would work for the IT guy with no budget.
| Qty | Description | Cost (ea) | Total |
| 4 | Black Box Cable Management D-Ring | $2.00 | $8.00 |
| 18 | Siemon Cable Carriers | $2.00 | $36.00 |
| 4 | Leviton 1U Cable Management Arm | $35.00 | $140.00 |
| 384 | Belkin 3, 4 & 55 Foot Patch Cables | $1.50 | $576.00 |
| Grand Total | $760.00 |
I used the large Black Box Cable Rings for the top 96 port patch panels. They held quite a bit of cable but they were a little flimsy. I lined the Siemon Cable Carriers along the side of the Cisco 6509, one dedicated to each card. If they were bigger, it would have helped tremendously. I made sure I ran all of the copper from the right and just ran the power and the fiber (easily moveable) from the right. This allows access without disconnecting any cables if I ever need to replace the fan card. The 1U cable managers were used for the 48 port switches that have replaced the 4x 24 port switches at the bottom.
Enough about how I did it, here is the outcome.
I realize this isn’t the professional quality you were looking for. I have some more velcro work to do and I need to add a couple more switches, but I don’t want to do any of that until we decide if this Cisco Catalyst 6500 series is staying in this IDF or being relocated. At least it wasn’t a horror film like it started out as. The CE COM Solution with a couple of neat patches would have been awesome, but not something that is in the cards right now. For under $1,000 and many hours of work, I now have an area that is manageable, and documented.
For closing, I just want to leave you with one thought. Just because you don’t get the solution you want (CE COM and Neatpatch in this situation) doesn’t mean you leave it broken. With a little creativity, and lots of work you can make just about anything work. Well, OK, maybe two thoughts. Data running through 110 blocks?!
