The Sixth Commandment of system administration    Monday, May 30 2005 @ 06:37 PM EDT Contributed by: glosser It's time for the sixth installment in the system administration tutorial from NewsForge. We brought you part five last Monday. Have you ever had to work in a dirty server closet filled with man-eating dust balls and rats' nests of cables so big they look like they're about to become sentient? If you have, you almost certainly have an appreciation for neatly bundled and labeled cabling. Managed cabling is equal parts art form and science, and it is a must for the successful operation of a production environment. Managed cabling not only looks better, but the extra time spent now to ensure everything is neat and organized can save you hours later. VI. Thou shalt know what cable goes where The only place to start with managed cabling is at the beginning. Try to never run cables directly from a switch to a rack full of servers. A patch panel between the two eliminates cable clutter effectively by having longer runs come together in one spot before running into the switch. The other benefit is that the patch panel provides an effective numbering scheme for the cabling right off the bat. I use the existing labeling on the patch panel, then use a marker to write the port number on the run back to the server. Then, that same port number is written on the end of the patch cable that plugs into the switch. Doing this allows me to instantly trace a cable across the data center without having to resort to downtime to tone out the cable or run the Fluke across it. Full tutorial   [ Views: 1376 ]

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