I'm a fire alarm tech, I've seen similar messes in my business, just cleaned up one of them; a 120 year old hotel. About 4 years back, the hotel manager fired us after he pointed to the splice box mess; literally 40 years of splicing and resplicing, a newer panel overlain atop the wiring of the old one.. at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, like I could fix it in an hour or so. I said "No Way in Hell". Certainly not happening when even sticking ones hand in the box would cause random disconnects, ground faults and other nasty maladies. all connected with as much as 8 runs under a single wire nut. I told him to shut the door, don't look at it, think about it or even breathe on it. We came back onto the scene after four other companies bid on it, ourselves included, we were the high bidder, the other companies, having each won the bid in succession, turned and ran for the hills when confronted with that splice box (I have pictures) The original project, I suspect was done in the late '70s, was a beautiful job. Its replacement in the late '90s was a horror show. it took two weeks to suss out the wiring for what equipment was attached to what wire. We then installed a new system on the other side of the wall from the original, gaining about 2 meters of wire length for 90% of the runs, I built a large splice box with numbered terminal strips, matching the wire I sussed out previously, tapped into the main trough, built the new panel and also set it on terminal strips within the splice can, I created an interconnect order for a co worker to neatly land. After programming, we spent the next 2 weeks shifting the wiring and field equipment to the new system, we finished testing and buttoning up yesterday, We final it today. The new splice can is a thing of beauty, One that I hope the next installer down the line will appreciate. complete with a connection schedule
Christ, if I ever walked into one of my datacenters and saw that, not only would people lose their jobs, but have an audit commissioned because there is definitely a whole load of other nonsense going on that isn’t visible and security and governance will be guaranteed to be in a dire state.
In my experience, messes like this tend to start out reasonably okay, but evolve into a rat's nest like this. It's hard to get the time and budget to go back in and clean it up until it HAS to be done.
A connection here on one day, another connection there a bit down the road, after 15 to 20 years of individual changes, they can easily get out of hand if the original wire management wasn't clear and easy to follow from the get go, Laziness and a just make it happen attitude contributes much to these messes
Been there and got plently of t-shirt, but I always remember one of the best kept rack, that I every saw was a Regus service office in Beijing, it was as close to perfect as you every could wish for, every patch cable dressed in, the correct length and labeled both ends. But what I thought was a stoke of genious by the designer, was put the rack in the receiption area an a glass room, so that everyone could see and I dare anyone to mess it up. I wish I still have the photos to show you..
Management love an OCD presented rack. Personally I'm not a fan. It's like gold plating your kitchen tongs. It costs a lot for no benefit and slows everything down because you are more worried about the tool than the task. But management like it because it's shiny.
@tradde11 honestly won’t matter if done over time or not. It’s a indicator someone (or some teams) aren’t aware of how unprofessional it looks and is not easy to maintain. Lack of leadership is next.
I mean Thin cable is nice and all. But as an IT Person I would be soo angry if any of those ports were PoE. Sure the Thick ones are hard to manage but I'd rather have that instead of thin ones wich are unshielded for poe or above 1G. I'd rather have cable management implementet with Neat Paches for example instead of thin cables.
That tower inside the bonus example rack is actually a case I own myself. I bought it one night when Intel debuted the pentium g3250, unlocked 2 core for their anniversary.my goal was to build a system just to check this cpu out. Oddly enough, one of the smallest and cheapest cases was this rajintec...and boy was it cheap! No wonder the rest of the rack looks like this 😅
Matthew, what is your opinion about: patch-panels interleaved with switches (with short patch cables) versus having a section of patch-panels and a section of switches with horizontal & vertical cable management clamps with long patch cables.
Great question. Normally you have to make this decision when the building is brand new or being majorly refit. I would always choose separating the patch panel rack from the switch rack simply because I am always under huge pressure to install the network in the earliest time that is possible. This is because the network is required by the security cameras, door access systems and other building management systems. By separating the patch form the switches, it means I can pre rack the switches before the cable termination has been completed without getting in the way of the cablers. This can save a day or more. It also means I can patch ports as the cablers finish terminating them one panel at a time, meaning the network can be in place some ports, way before the termination is completed. It's very common for the cablers to a single panel of urgent ports first as specified by the building project manager. Secondly, interleaving means that, if each port has differing VLAN requirements, and I usually do, you have to manually configure each port one at a time, which takes a lot of time, and makes the configuration harder to read. Instead I normally group switches into VLANs, for example, the top two switches might be for AV and the next three for general user access and the next one for WiFi, BMS, door access and cameras. Or some thing like that. I'd love to hear other people's opinion on your question.
I've only ever experienced two server rooms worse than that. One had the cables dangling over your head so it looks like a jungle between two rows. The other one the cables were so long they were just tucked into the base of each server rack they were so dirty and dusty I swear I ate 10 lb of dust that day
Imagine this with another row of racks with cables running across the aisle. I couldn't throw a wad of paper down the aisle, much less walk between the rows of racks. The concept of running cables up and over the aisle was lost on the site manager.
I went in for an interview for a company that had a rack like that. Except that the floor around the racks was also covered in a tangled rats nest. You couldn't get within 5 feet of the racks without tripping over cables. I didn't realize that my comments weren't appreciated by the guy interviewing me since it was his mess. Yeah, I didn't get the job. 🤭
@@matthewdaley7535 No big loss. I ended up getting brought on to another company the next week for better pay and benefits. So I probably wouldn't have taken it anyway.
i am pretty tolerant of a messy rack as long as you can still manage to do a cable trace without too much trouble. It used to be a lot worse than it is. The rack doors used to close, meaning all that cable mass was jammed up tight as a drum inside.
This is nothing, I Had one so bad I just didn't have time to fix. Called Black Box.. they took pictures and were like "WOW, look at this! refused the contract and went home!! It was a large room 25'X30' with both phone and network, with duplicate numbering! and ONE LIGHT BULB!!! it was a cats cradle of wire, you had to play twister just to reach the panel. In 33 years of fixing backoffice problems I have never seen worse! Racks like that are all over. made a good living cleaning them up.
Someone really did not like cutting wires to length or bothering to color code things! Plus, zip ties are cheap! My main PC has a bit of rats nest cabling going all over, but it's just a regular PC and it won't ever get worse than it is now. I'm okay with it.
I'm only a light computer hobbyist and I wanted to smack who ever did that original install. JUST WHY. They could have had it LESS expensive if they just cut the lengths themselves.
They would have bought a huge number of 2 and 3 metre cables when the building was new and just used what they had. They would have thought it was easier to manage a stock pile of 2 ,3 and 5 metres instead of .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3 and 5. It may have actually been cheaper if you end up with an excess of one size because you guessed quantities wrong. Then end result was this mess.
If you think that's messy, don't get jobs in broadcast. Halfway in and laughing my arse off - clearly, none of the commenters, and maybe the poster, have done the seminars on cables from companies like Belden. First up,... Messy Cables Don't Cross-talk !! Next, the ideal minimum legth to reduce reflections back down the cables, is about 15 feet for network cables. Lastly - Port Trace? WTF?? Why aren't the cables Labeled with numbers at both ends and the spreadsheet on hand?
I remember the days of cigarette packed wire runs into racks pre ethernet, the alien crosstalk was pure hell with some sensitive equipment, I prefer a slightly less than perfect job, connections, yes. where one or two runs out of place doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. My trick to wire management is to make the general order not quite perfect, because the next person in it, on a quick service call won't be, but to make it so that the next person in it has to follow along with the general plan.
I'm a fire alarm tech, I've seen similar messes in my business, just cleaned up one of them; a 120 year old hotel.
About 4 years back, the hotel manager fired us after he pointed to the splice box mess; literally 40 years of splicing and resplicing, a newer panel overlain atop the wiring of the old one.. at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, like I could fix it in an hour or so. I said "No Way in Hell". Certainly not happening when even sticking ones hand in the box would cause random disconnects, ground faults and other nasty maladies. all connected with as much as 8 runs under a single wire nut. I told him to shut the door, don't look at it, think about it or even breathe on it.
We came back onto the scene after four other companies bid on it, ourselves included, we were the high bidder, the other companies, having each won the bid in succession, turned and ran for the hills when confronted with that splice box (I have pictures)
The original project, I suspect was done in the late '70s, was a beautiful job. Its replacement in the late '90s was a horror show. it took two weeks to suss out the wiring for what equipment was attached to what wire. We then installed a new system on the other side of the wall from the original, gaining about 2 meters of wire length for 90% of the runs, I built a large splice box with numbered terminal strips, matching the wire I sussed out previously, tapped into the main trough, built the new panel and also set it on terminal strips within the splice can, I created an interconnect order for a co worker to neatly land. After programming, we spent the next 2 weeks shifting the wiring and field equipment to the new system, we finished testing and buttoning up yesterday, We final it today. The new splice can is a thing of beauty, One that I hope the next installer down the line will appreciate. complete with a connection schedule
Christ, if I ever walked into one of my datacenters and saw that, not only would people lose their jobs, but have an audit commissioned because there is definitely a whole load of other nonsense going on that isn’t visible and security and governance will be guaranteed to be in a dire state.
In my experience, messes like this tend to start out reasonably okay, but evolve into a rat's nest like this. It's hard to get the time and budget to go back in and clean it up until it HAS to be done.
A connection here on one day, another connection there a bit down the road, after 15 to 20 years of individual changes, they can easily get out of hand if the original wire management wasn't clear and easy to follow from the get go, Laziness and a just make it happen attitude contributes much to these messes
The amount of airflow restriction and heat soak build up with those cables is crazy !
jts the curse of the messy forbidden spaghetti
My god that is one hell of a mess. Great video and thanks for sharing this, have liked and subscribed 👍
Been there and got plently of t-shirt, but I always remember one of the best kept rack, that I every saw was a Regus service office in Beijing, it was as close to perfect as you every could wish for, every patch cable dressed in, the correct length and labeled both ends. But what I thought was a stoke of genious by the designer, was put the rack in the receiption area an a glass room, so that everyone could see and I dare anyone to mess it up. I wish I still have the photos to show you..
Management love an OCD presented rack. Personally I'm not a fan. It's like gold plating your kitchen tongs. It costs a lot for no benefit and slows everything down because you are more worried about the tool than the task. But management like it because it's shiny.
I'll bet that anyone that still had the will to tidy it was told "you can't unplug that".
My boss would balk at me and the fire me LMAO
If I built a rack like you first showed I’d be fired so quickly.
Well that’s you lol the average company doesn’t know this business or needs so we expect spaghetti
@tradde11 honestly won’t matter if done over time or not. It’s a indicator someone (or some teams) aren’t aware of how unprofessional it looks and is not easy to maintain. Lack of leadership is next.
The music helped, thank you 😂😂😂
The only thing it is missing is a couple of 8 port switches held up by patch cables.
I mean Thin cable is nice and all. But as an IT Person I would be soo angry if any of those ports were PoE. Sure the Thick ones are hard to manage but I'd rather have that instead of thin ones wich are unshielded for poe or above 1G.
I'd rather have cable management implementet with Neat Paches for example instead of thin cables.
Seven words that make algorithms love You.
That tower inside the bonus example rack is actually a case I own myself. I bought it one night when Intel debuted the pentium g3250, unlocked 2 core for their anniversary.my goal was to build a system just to check this cpu out. Oddly enough, one of the smallest and cheapest cases was this rajintec...and boy was it cheap! No wonder the rest of the rack looks like this 😅
These are the norm
Matthew, what is your opinion about: patch-panels interleaved with switches (with short patch cables) versus having a section of patch-panels and a section of switches with horizontal & vertical cable management clamps with long patch cables.
Great question. Normally you have to make this decision when the building is brand new or being majorly refit. I would always choose separating the patch panel rack from the switch rack simply because I am always under huge pressure to install the network in the earliest time that is possible. This is because the network is required by the security cameras, door access systems and other building management systems. By separating the patch form the switches, it means I can pre rack the switches before the cable termination has been completed without getting in the way of the cablers. This can save a day or more. It also means I can patch ports as the cablers finish terminating them one panel at a time, meaning the network can be in place some ports, way before the termination is completed. It's very common for the cablers to a single panel of urgent ports first as specified by the building project manager. Secondly, interleaving means that, if each port has differing VLAN requirements, and I usually do, you have to manually configure each port one at a time, which takes a lot of time, and makes the configuration harder to read. Instead I normally group switches into VLANs, for example, the top two switches might be for AV and the next three for general user access and the next one for WiFi, BMS, door access and cameras. Or some thing like that. I'd love to hear other people's opinion on your question.
Organically grown cable salad :O
I've only ever experienced two server rooms worse than that. One had the cables dangling over your head so it looks like a jungle between two rows. The other one the cables were so long they were just tucked into the base of each server rack they were so dirty and dusty I swear I ate 10 lb of dust that day
Imagine this with another row of racks with cables running across the aisle. I couldn't throw a wad of paper down the aisle, much less walk between the rows of racks. The concept of running cables up and over the aisle was lost on the site manager.
I use the net scout, it saves me hours of work.
I went in for an interview for a company that had a rack like that. Except that the floor around the racks was also covered in a tangled rats nest. You couldn't get within 5 feet of the racks without tripping over cables. I didn't realize that my comments weren't appreciated by the guy interviewing me since it was his mess. Yeah, I didn't get the job. 🤭
Sorry about that. Although, maybe he did you a favour. :-)
@@matthewdaley7535 No big loss. I ended up getting brought on to another company the next week for better pay and benefits. So I probably wouldn't have taken it anyway.
Haven’t companies heard of the cloud? Managing JSON is so much easier than physical kit.
Worst is racks facing a wall where most of the rat nest is behind the equipment.
I'm excited to see the after, but also, I don't think it's that bad.
i am pretty tolerant of a messy rack as long as you can still manage to do a cable trace without too much trouble. It used to be a lot worse than it is. The rack doors used to close, meaning all that cable mass was jammed up tight as a drum inside.
The music helped
This is nothing, I Had one so bad I just didn't have time to fix. Called Black Box.. they took pictures and were like "WOW, look at this! refused the contract and went home!!
It was a large room 25'X30' with both phone and network, with duplicate numbering! and ONE LIGHT BULB!!! it was a cats cradle of wire, you had to play twister just to reach the panel.
In 33 years of fixing backoffice problems I have never seen worse! Racks like that are all over. made a good living cleaning them up.
It looks like a 3D print.
I still prefer the Patch Panel - Switch - Patch Panel configurations ...
I mean, if it works.. 😂
Shit made me panic hard as an SysAd
Someone really did not like cutting wires to length or bothering to color code things! Plus, zip ties are cheap! My main PC has a bit of rats nest cabling going all over, but it's just a regular PC and it won't ever get worse than it is now. I'm okay with it.
Link the device in hire description next time ❤
I'm only a light computer hobbyist and I wanted to smack who ever did that original install. JUST WHY. They could have had it LESS expensive if they just cut the lengths themselves.
They would have bought a huge number of 2 and 3 metre cables when the building was new and just used what they had. They would have thought it was easier to manage a stock pile of 2 ,3 and 5 metres instead of .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3 and 5. It may have actually been cheaper if you end up with an excess of one size because you guessed quantities wrong. Then end result was this mess.
Really…you didnt do much. I was expecting a wow job especialy if you make a big deal of it here
If you think that's messy, don't get jobs in broadcast. Halfway in and laughing my arse off - clearly, none of the commenters, and maybe the poster, have done the seminars on cables from companies like Belden.
First up,... Messy Cables Don't Cross-talk !!
Next, the ideal minimum legth to reduce reflections back down the cables, is about 15 feet for network cables.
Lastly - Port Trace? WTF?? Why aren't the cables Labeled with numbers at both ends and the spreadsheet on hand?
Minimum length 15ft, yeah, okay, in imaginationland
@@SuperSpecies Look it up. You get the minimum signal reflection from the end of the cable that way. Every reflection is signal loss.
I remember the days of cigarette packed wire runs into racks pre ethernet, the alien crosstalk was pure hell with some sensitive equipment, I prefer a slightly less than perfect job, connections, yes. where one or two runs out of place doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.
My trick to wire management is to make the general order not quite perfect, because the next person in it, on a quick service call won't be, but to make it so that the next person in it has to follow along with the general plan.
The worst so far 😊
Thanks. A good Simpsons reference always helps keep things in perspective.
Look more arts for me