Cleaning Up a Server Room Mess

If you’ve ever been in the server closet at your place of work, chances are you’ve seen a tangled mess of cables connecting switches, patch panels, firewalls, and servers.  If you’re in the least bit OCD or a neat-freak, it probably drives you nuts.  And not only is it messy, it’s inefficient. In the event of an issue, the big pile of spaghetti makes it much more difficult to trace the problem and trouble shoot. Many providers can make your cabling work; making it work the right way is a different story.

We recently brought on a new client whose previous managed IT services provider either didn’t know what they were doing, or didn’t care to do things the right way (so far, we’re thinking it was a little of each). Aside from an email migration and server consolidation, we had to clean up the mess in the server room at one of their two facilities.

In this case, budget was somewhat of a concern due to the other major projects taking place at the same time. Switches were not properly placed (between patch panels) during the original installation (again, lack of knowledge or lack of interest?), and to reconfigure the racks would’ve been an even bigger project. So, we cleaned the mess up enough to allow for greater ease of troubleshooting in the event of an issue, while also making things look a lot more pleasing to the eye.  We also used the proper length cables for the job, as well as the same type of cables, throughout.  Consistency makes everything work better.

Looking at these pictures, which do you prefer? Before or After?  If you like the After version, give Ashton a call at 216 397-4080 to clean up your server room.