this is the shape my predecessor (what a tool) left the wiring closet in in our office in northwest new york:





if you look closely you can see that that's a patch panel literally laying on top of 2 cisco switches

the good news is that i'm here to setup a whole new office so all this is getting ripped apart and i have the new space wired up to a proper patch panel and labelled and zip tied and ready for the 2 switches and our firewall

1/3/2008 2:50:35 PM

that looks like my computer room at home

1/3/2008 2:55:22 PM

LGTM

1/3/2008 3:08:34 PM

Does it work:
O Yes
O No

1/3/2008 3:09:04 PM

If only I could show you some pictures of network upgrades prior to me getting on-site and then after I left. At least none of the equipment is on the floor covered in dust, candy, and whatever else you can think of.

1/3/2008 3:18:21 PM

Those pictures are going to give me nightmares.

1/3/2008 3:39:07 PM

new office is much much better

i'm going to burn the old one now

1/3/2008 6:40:46 PM

KEYCODE INSIDE

1/3/2008 6:50:11 PM

I've seen worse... but yea, it's nice to have it fixed neat

1/3/2008 6:56:36 PM

Sweet Jesus, that's messier than both the telco closets I was in today. And I didn't think that was possible. Who put that closet together, Helen Keller?

Oh, and good luck with the re-wiring, just don't overdo the zip-ties. They're a PITA to undo.

1/3/2008 8:54:13 PM

I spy a phone... Looks useless...

1/3/2008 9:21:24 PM

oh man

this would never do at the place where i work

you should see all our cabinets in the datacenters

they are wired impeccably

1/3/2008 9:39:16 PM

My God.

1/3/2008 9:52:55 PM

The Terremark Miami datacenter is about the best I've ever seen. They mandate color coded cables for different functions of the network (backup network, management network, public, ILO, etc), and come in and custome cut the cables so that there is no need for zip ties. Its a bitch if you want to change anything, but looks nice otherwise. The newer Verizon datacenters are the same way to a certain extent.

1/3/2008 10:03:24 PM

Quote :

"The Terremark Miami datacenter is about the best I've ever seen. They mandate color coded cables for different functions of the network (backup network, management network, public, ILO, etc), and come in and custome cut the cables so that there is no need for zip ties. Its a bitch if you want to change anything, but looks nice otherwise. The newer Verizon datacenters are the same way to a certain extent."

this is essentially how we do all of our datacenters as well

any company worth a damn will do things this way

1/4/2008 12:56:52 AM

^yep, how ours does it as well

1/4/2008 2:01:23 AM

my company does the same thing, nice and neat, and we only employ about 80 people.

1/4/2008 4:11:29 AM

I saw some pretty bad network closets when I was working for the DOT but I don't think any were quite this chaotic.

1/4/2008 5:00:54 AM

Quote :

"any company worth a damn will do things this way"

yeah, I've been deployed to several customer sites, and almost all of them had very well designed and organized data centers. The nicest I've seen is Bloomberg, but while looked pretty, when I took a fiber scope to the actual cabling, it was really horribly made cable (union labor).

The ugliest I've seen is CSFB, as far as big companies go.

1/4/2008 8:24:53 AM

1/4/2008 8:39:03 AM

haha, that looks a lot like our lab

1/4/2008 8:51:36 AM

someone photoshop the devil at the back end of that room. lolol

1/4/2008 8:52:57 AM

Quote :

"just don't overdo the zip-ties. They're a PITA to undo."

mini-dikes ftw

1/4/2008 9:23:38 AM

hey bobby, i'll trade your lab mess for my lab mess....


But yea, for a small closet that pic in the op is just insane. I'd stab someone for that.

1/4/2008 11:37:46 AM

That's inexcusable in a professional setting. (Though some of the older closets at NCSU are pretty bad too, they're not in that much of a mess...)

Yikes.

1/4/2008 2:41:25 PM

Is that a Firebox at the top? Firebox FTL

1/4/2008 2:45:23 PM

Quote :

"Oh, and good luck with the re-wiring, just don't overdo the zip-ties. They're a PITA to undo."

Also, as a public service announcement, be CAREFUL when undoing them. I'd invest in one of those little snipping tools if you have to undo them with any regularity. This after having two different of my employees stab themselves in the hand requiring stitches while trying to undo zip-ties (one with a pocketknife, one with a pair of scissors).

1/4/2008 3:50:27 PM

i dunno, i'd stay away from the snipping tools. one of my employees accidentally sawed off his left arm with one of those things

1/4/2008 3:52:43 PM

well he did get so entangled in the wires that it was his only way out

you need to tell people the whole story

1/4/2008 3:53:28 PM

I'd bet my datacenters are bigger than your datacenters

1/4/2008 4:00:59 PM

I'll open that one:

38.7km of multi mode fiber
303.36km of single mode fiber
3.4km of cat5


Welcome to my house of cables.

(note, working in a global financial data center is cheating)

1/4/2008 4:27:37 PM

^ psst... cdubya works for google. he wins

1/4/2008 4:30:45 PM

Quote :

"two different of my employees stab themselves in the hand requiring stitches while trying to undo zip-ties (one with a pocketknife, one with a pair of scissors)."

Darwin candidates

1/4/2008 4:43:42 PM

Quote :

"Is that a Firebox at the top? Firebox FTL"

nah, it's a stonegate firewall

1/4/2008 5:45:08 PM

Quote :

"Darwin candidates"

haha. The real question is did they fuck up the cables?

1/4/2008 6:25:55 PM

Cables were unscathed. Bonus points for that.

1/4/2008 7:18:31 PM

our scatternet wing is the cleanest place i have ever seen. the best part is that the old network closet is not the security closet.

1/4/2008 7:35:17 PM

1/7/2008 12:53:41 PM

THIS IS WHAT MY DATA CENTER LOOKS LIKE:

1/7/2008 2:53:54 PM

something like that? the glow needs to be cleaned up more

1/7/2008 7:12:38 PM