New servers and the standing room only office
Feb 25, 2010 Technology, Work
It has been a while since my last post here. I have a few things in the works to put up that are still in draft form and I am hoping to finish the documentation here shortly to get those items out. In the mean time though here is my latest project. The company I work for is in the process of changing out some of our main software to another companies software. Due to this new software we are in need of more servers to handle this software. We are in the process of adding 2 new switches and 2 more ESX servers. It is a beauty seeing 128GB of RAM in each of the 2 servers I just put in the rack today. If you were wondering what 128GB of RAM looks like here it is:
With this new hardware we have started to take a better care of how we deal with cables. Mostly in regards to labeling and color coding since we(I) have not done that well with this in the past. I am in the process of replacing the cabling for certain functions going to our other servers along with updating the labels on all network cables. All of our cabling currently is gray CAT6 cable that is labeled on one end only which is a real pain. Here is how things will be structured now:
- All servers/switches/SANs have a label on front AND back such as VMx for ESX servers, SANx for either SAN and SWx for switches.
- All network cables will be labeled at BOTH ends of the cable. Label will consist of equipment name, PCI slot and which jack on the PCI card.
- Network cable will be color coded based on function:
- KVM = Purple
- Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) = Orange
- iSCSI = Red (Means don’t touch this or something terrible will happen, heads will roll!)
- Regular LAN = Gray and some blue since I have run out of gray
- Power PDU (Power Distribution Unit) have a stripe of colored electrical tape on each and labeled as to which UPS they go to
- Power cords for servers have corresponding stripe of electrical tape wrapped around signifying which PDU connected to as well as being labeled on PDU side what the power cord goes to.
- Any power cord connecting two PDUs has a stripe of each color electrical tape signifying where it is coming from/going
Once I get done with the entire project in the next couple business days I will post more pictures of things. Until then I will leave you with a view of my standing room only office for the past/next few days with the folding wall shelf.
If you have any other type of labeling/coloring of your wires please feel free to leave a comment.
Tags: Dell, ESX, Labeling, Networking, Server
