Network pics thread

haunter said:
Too far to get premade cables??
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Just expensive here for premade cables, cheaper to buy a 1000ft box and ends and do it all myself.

mikeblas said:
Easier to reconfigure if you run to the patch panel; I also think it's easier to document and inspect. Fewer points of failure if you connect to the switches.
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That was one thought, the other side of it is my clean side of not wanting cables hanging out the front :D

I know it is more work to punch them all but since i am redoing everything anyways, i figured why not go all the way!

Now to find patch panels, just went to a place here and they want $200+ for a 24 port patch panel with the end already in it.

this:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10514&cs_id=1051401&p_id=7305&seq=1&format=2

here was priced at almost $400 cause it was some special cat 6 10G patch panel.
 
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Helping with an Exchange 2007 to 2010 migration tomorrow and then Friday I'm most likely getting to setup a new ASA and some 3750's. Hopefully its one of the new sexy ASA's. Pics to come.
 
l3thal6 said:
Looks like it was done to make the lab easily reconfigurable.
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I would do it as much as possible in an environment where things change often such as cisco lab, less chance of damaging a switch/router port which is much more difficult to replace than a port on a patch panel or the whole panel
 
So coworker of mine was supposed to put in a new switch and run some cabling to some of our servers.

I took some time today to walk behind the rack and found this...

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This is why I don't trust my coworkers to cable anything in our data centers. Hopefully the new person we just hired has the same standards that I have.
 
I can give a little leeway when it is pre-made cable and you get stuck to certain lengths but he spent two days making every cable.

I told my boss I wanted to grab them and just yank them all out.
 
piker28 said:
I can give a little leeway when it is pre-made cable and you get stuck to certain lengths but he spent two days making every cable.

I told my boss I wanted to grab them and just yank them all out.
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He made all that mess behind there? Was there nothing before, because it doesn't look well done on any accounts. My favorite is the blue network cable going from one rack to another. That's cute.
 
When I first started it was not good but not horrible. I worked my turtle ways to slowly clean it up. Then stupid coworkers will come in and be like "I need to run a cable" and stretch it across the back of the racks.

Another day we lose partial power and for some reason the Director felt it was a good idea to come in himself and just start moving the power plugs to get things working.
 
I posted a link to the finished lab that I built a while back, right now it's in pieces but wanted to share a few pictures of the previous build. Can't wait to put it back together and commence with the studying.

this is my empty rack. It was cut then installed on wheels for easy maneuvering.
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some equipment in and a few cables.
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equipment moved a bit, routers and switches installed. more cables for the patch panels
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everything is in, both panels installed and almost punched down.
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Back of patch panels and back view of lab.
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Yeah piker that is pretty bad but I'd like to show what I've somewhat inherited in the new network I'm dealing with. It might be almost impossible to ever get this straightened out to the way I'd like it though :(

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Thats the mess in front of a 6506. I will never understand why people like to put switches or any networking gear with more than a few connections in a closed rack.
 
ToX said:
Thats the mess in front of a 6506. I will never understand why people like to put switches or any networking gear with more than a few connections in a closed rack.
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yeah you really need the extra wide if you insist on 4 post.

I just did patch and switches in a standard width enclosed 4 post, and its doable, albeit no where near as pretty as a wide rack
 
It'd be a hell of a lot nicer if people would do patch panel - switch - patch panel - switch. Or even two switches in a row and then a patch panel. I hate when people do like 8Us of patch panels and then have friggin 10 foot patch cables going to the switches. All of our racks here look like that. It's horrid, yet I'm never allowed to fix it...
 
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Not necessarily network related, but i got a nice big FREE box of wire loom :) Going to have some fun!
 
/usr/home said:
It'd be a hell of a lot nicer if people would do patch panel - switch - patch panel - switch. Or even two switches in a row and then a patch panel. I hate when people do like 8Us of patch panels and then have friggin 10 foot patch cables going to the switches. All of our racks here look like that. It's horrid, yet I'm never allowed to fix it...
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yeah, I understand that. mine are the same way, 'its more organized'

yet less organized
 
I'd be able to make it work if I could do something with the cabling lengths probably.....or at least not have as much shite hanging in front of the whole thing. I'd rather just move it to an open rack with cable management trough's on the side. who know's if I'll ever get to do it.
 
I should take a pic of both of our 6500s tomorrow. Holy Rats nest.... It will get cleaned up once we virtualize servers, but man. The guy before me.. Yikes
 
I plugged two ILO ports into the switch at a place today. I have no idea why anybody would not want to plug those in.
 
D-EJ915 said:
I plugged two ILO ports into the switch at a place today. I have no idea why anybody would not want to plug those in.
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I just started at my job about a year ago so I'm "low" on the totem pole (we all have the same job description, title, and pay, but I'm the new guy so yeah) and none of our Dell servers have their DRAC cards plugged in. I was even racking a new server and asked, hey, should I plug this in? I was told no, we don't use those. Blew my mind... There's so many things I would change but again, I'm the new guy and the youngest.... :rolleyes:
 
yeah I had to look them up when I started.

we still don't use them, but a migration is coming soon so I figured I would wait

now Im leaving so I guess they will never get used because my coworker is a moron
 
ChRoNo16 said:
6ps3mb.jpg


Not necessarily network related, but i got a nice big FREE box of wire loom :) Going to have some fun!
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That's actually called techflex, i have TONS of this stuff, used it for making audio cables and other things related to audio :) AND TONS AND TONS of heat shrink.

THIS is wire loom

1-hosa-wire-loom.jpg
 
lol its ok- all I know is the colors are grea, the price was unbeatable, and I have many feet to keep me busy for a while.
 
ToX said:
I'd be able to make it work if I could do something with the cabling lengths probably.....or at least not have as much shite hanging in front of the whole thing. I'd rather just move it to an open rack with cable management trough's on the side. who know's if I'll ever get to do it.
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Scary, for me i would just start changing cables one at a time, otherwise i would just snap and tell someone off.

/usr/home said:
I just started at my job about a year ago so I'm "low" on the totem pole (we all have the same job description, title, and pay, but I'm the new guy so yeah) and none of our Dell servers have their DRAC cards plugged in. I was even racking a new server and asked, hey, should I plug this in? I was told no, we don't use those. Blew my mind... There's so many things I would change but again, I'm the new guy and the youngest.... :rolleyes:
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For me i never had iDrac ports, only recently, the last 2 years, did i really know what they did, since i do installations from WDS, but now that i have played with them more and more, i wonder how did i ever do with out them!

i think people who say dont connect them.... dont know how to use them
 
/usr/home said:
I just started at my job about a year ago so I'm "low" on the totem pole (we all have the same job description, title, and pay, but I'm the new guy so yeah) and none of our Dell servers have their DRAC cards plugged in. I was even racking a new server and asked, hey, should I plug this in? I was told no, we don't use those. Blew my mind... There's so many things I would change but again, I'm the new guy and the youngest.... :rolleyes:
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Plug one in, give it an ip address and login with IE or firefox and go to town. Dracs and other similar tech is a tool everyone should use. Say you have a server go down, get on vpn, get on the drac and oh hey something went wrong and for some reason I've gotta hit f1. Srver boots back up, make up your own situation. Drac basically lets you use your browser to view the server just like you were plugging your crash cart into it.

Love dracs
 
Out of Band management tools like iDRAC is damn useful. Saved my butt a couple of times overtime. Yet I have a couple servers that their DRACs are not plugged in but that'S going to change soon after i'm done with the wiring at my place.
 
Langly said:
Plug one in, give it an ip address and login with IE or firefox and go to town. Dracs and other similar tech is a tool everyone should use. Say you have a server go down, get on vpn, get on the drac and oh hey something went wrong and for some reason I've gotta hit f1. Srver boots back up, make up your own situation. Drac basically lets you use your browser to view the server just like you were plugging your crash cart into it.

Love dracs
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I would love to do that, but again, I'm the noob at work.. lol. Plus it's healthcare and they are super paranoid about stupid things.
 
Langly said:
Plug one in, give it an ip address and login with IE or firefox and go to town. Dracs and other similar tech is a tool everyone should use. Say you have a server go down, get on vpn, get on the drac and oh hey something went wrong and for some reason I've gotta hit f1. Srver boots back up, make up your own situation. Drac basically lets you use your browser to view the server just like you were plugging your crash cart into it.

Love dracs
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We use networked Raritans for that.
 
piker28 said:
So coworker of mine was supposed to put in a new switch and run some cabling to some of our servers.

I took some time today to walk behind the rack and found this...
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I love the 8 port netgear unmanaged switch hanging by the cables in the rack there, that's awesome.
 
toothpaste said:
everything is in, both panels installed and almost punched down.
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Back of patch panels and back view of lab.
3758336895_bc8ce3cec5_z.jpg
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Aren't they wired wrong? I thought you were supposed to patch from fron of switch to front of patch panel then have your structured cabling go off from the back of the patch panel?

Also- seems odd to put all the patch panels at the top and switches in the middle.
 
ltickett said:
Aren't they wired wrong? I thought you were supposed to patch from fron of switch to front of patch panel then have your structured cabling go off from the back of the patch panel?

Also- seems odd to put all the patch panels at the top and switches in the middle.
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You missed the part where it says it's a Cisco lab. The patch panels are together so it's easy for him to patch switches together. Basically if you want port 1 of switch 1 and port 2 of switch 2, you just run a crossover between PP port 1 and PP port 2.
 
/usr/home said:
You missed the part where it says it's a Cisco lab. The patch panels are together so it's easy for him to patch switches together. Basically if you want port 1 of switch 1 and port 2 of switch 2, you just run a crossover between PP port 1 and PP port 2.
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I thought this might be the point, but then thought surely you'd just patch port 1 of switch 1 with port 2 of switch 2 directly?
 
ltickett said:
I thought this might be the point, but then thought surely you'd just patch port 1 of switch 1 with port 2 of switch 2 directly?
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Lol, that's what I would do personally. Look back a page or two and he explains why he did it that way.
 
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I apologize for the crappy pictures. These are a couple from our main facility. You can see the mess of patch cables. The contractors who did the drops when it was built did a nice job, but the guys before me made a real mess of the patch cables.
 
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