Dell Rack Setup Advice

[dbarasch]

I have only one rack of servers, with the rack currently having about 8 servers/Powervault,SAN. I want to reorganized the rack, because of the cable mess it has, and other things (Im sure you know what I am talking about).

First, it is recommended to place switches inside a server rack? Currently for every server I have to run two-four cables over head on a cable ladder to the rack that currently contains the switches and patch panels. What I want to do is to move the switch inside the server rack, and then connect two fiber optic cables connecting the server switch to the client switches. Is this how you have it, and do you recommend this?

Second, how do you contain all the power cords? Right now the are all tangled, and the one Dell sends you are like 10ft long. My UPS's are in the same server rack on the bottom. At the bottom are all the power cords connected to the UPS, but it is messy. Do you use custom power cord lenghts for every server you add to the rack, to make sure no mess is created? Your thoughts?

 

[NickFerrar]

I prefer not having switches in the racks (although we do have in some of ours), we mostly use a patching strip in the rack that goes under the floor to a comms cab that contains the switches.

As for the cabling, it does tend to get messy once you have a lot of equipment in the rack. Like you say unless you use custom cable lengths there's not a whole lot you can do about it, we just put up with the mess rather than go to the expense.

IME though it's definetly worth getting the proper Dell rack PDUs and 0U mounting them, saves a fair bit of clutter.