On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 01:03:32AM -0400, Steve Bertrand wrote:
I would like to know ANYONE who has a policy strict enough, and enforces it so as to have even an almost perfect cabling infrastructure...is there such a thing?
ValPak, Largo FL.
Their datacenter is new, $3.6M in a new completely automated $200M building, and it's *gorgeous*. Thanks to APC for organizing a (sales) tour about 3 months ago; I love facility porn.
I was in a data center for a large bank here in Pittsburgh a few years ago, and they definitely went the extra mile to keep their cable plant neatly organized and properly dressed, and they continued to maintain that after the building was turned up.
That's the real test. I've seen lots of data centers and colo facilities that looked great for the grand opening and started turning into rat's nests as the move/add/change tickets started coming in :(
jms
I opened a ~100k square ft DC in 2001, and it is still immaculate (i'm not with the company any longer btw), for one very simple reason... Its someones job. All the guy does is run cables, if anyone brings in their own cable, it gets immediately unplugged and cut in half (not kidding, its happened). All cables are labelled at each end, with hostname/patch panel/switch-m-p info, so at any point you can reference the run. When you make it someones job, they can take pride in it. If you have a guy who has 10 other things to do, being tidy will end up low on the list... The mucky mucks toured the Data Center and were very impressed, then they asked the facility manager how long they spent cleaning up. The answer was simple, "It always looks like this." My advice to anyone with a large facility. Hire someone who does good work, pay them well, and give them your confidence to do the right thing. Don't depend on NE's, or SA's to keep it tidy, because honestly, there will come a time when they have bigger fish to fry. Steve