[AusNOG] "Best practice" - guidelines, standards etc?

[Alan Maher]

I can sympathise with this scenario, having seen it only too often over
the years.
 From the early morning call to establish why the network is down, and 
then to
wander around trying to establish which of the overnight cleaners 
"accidentally"
knocked out a co-ax terminator from the wall outlet in a token ring set up.
To the MD who thought that co-ax outlet might be an aerial input for his new
4.5" portable tv so he could watch the cricket.
To the many companies whose server set up just "growed like topsy" and 
live and dead
equipment lived alongside the biggest pile of spaghetti in the world.
Where modems and patch connections were all laying around the floor in a 
spare
office recently vacated by the photo copier.
Where offices were connected by Cat 5 punched through a hole in the 
suspended ceiling
and dragged around in all directions (including through the A/C ducting) 
by the tame
sparky.
Being called in by the BIG suppliers, as the client refused to pay their 
outrageous, inflated fees
to tidy the mess up, and they in turn refused to guarantee their big 
iron unless the mess was sorted.
And of course, there was a Mexican standoff re payment for said Big Iron.
To the A/C guys who discovered the problem was all the "crazy" blues 
wires that were covering the
the inlet on their A/C unit- and simply cut them all off.
To the large corporation with a head office/warehouse scenario who 
seemed to have around 200
outlets, but at a rough count , some 500 cables coming into a big mess 
on the floor.
Apparently, when the tame sparky ran a new cable, and it didn't work, 
they just called him back to
run another one.
A quick visit showed said tame sparky had cable tied all his data cables 
to warehouse to the 3inch
thick, 3 phase, mains cable to the warehouse.
Yes, it all worked well (sometimes), until such time as the warehouse 
plugged in all their electric fork hoists to
be re-charged.
And my favourite is still- "Can't you just put in one of those raised 
floors like the big guys have
and cover it all up?"

Yes, I am showing my age, but most of it is common sense.
Sorting out the mess afterwards can take a bit of time, but it is mostly 
a question of following
a plan (any plan will do, so long as it can be documented and explained).
Colour coding cables helps, and nothing beats a label printer to attach 
labels to the cables
so that everything is simple- input-output etc.
The key word is "Structured cabling"- google it, and you will find 
untold resources and opinions.
The rest is just plain hard work and untangling spaghetti.
Having a sense of humour, and an account at the scrap metal place for 
beer money obtained
from all the surplus copper helps.

Have fun.

Alan Maher




On 11/06/2013 12:56 p.m., Ross Wheeler wrote:
>
> Hi all.
>
> I've been asked to assist with the redesign of a medium-sized 
> business's IT infrastructure and am looking for any actual standards 
> or guidelines relevant to Australia. The current site is quite a mess, 
> ad-hoc additions and changes over many years and multiple people in 
> charge.
>
> Particular issues would include such things as OH&S requirements, 
> best-practice for server/comms/cable racks, server room considerations 
> against most risks etc.
>
> Photos of some "well thought out" installations and racks would be 
> beneficial.
>
> To be clear, this is not a multi-million dollar datacentre. It's an 
> entity of a couple of hundred staff with perhaps 2 or 3 racks of 
> servers and comms gear, probably one additional enclosure for cable 
> termination, patch etc.
>
> They want to depart from the old "spaghetti everywhere" environment to 
> something more managable. Suspended floors and rack doors to simply 
> cover the mess up (but leave the underlying problems) are not where 
> they want to be. They're sick of downtime and network instability 
> because the wrong cable has been unplugged, or in accessing one cable 
> another has been dislodged. Of avoidable downtime because nobody can 
> find or follow anything to fix or work around a problem, etc.
>
> Anyone got anything they can share?
>
> TIA,
> RossW
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