[AusNOG] Improving rack density with different cable management

[John Edwards]

Have a look at "patch by exception" systems, see if your application is a good fit.

John

> On 27 May 2014, at 3:06 pm, Paul Gear <ausnog at libertysys.com.au> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Most of our sites have fairly simple cable management using traditional cable management like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nc7bmgs7j85laeq/20140527_145239.jpg
> 
> This is easy to work with in most cases where we don't have high port counts.  However, once you push 48 Cat6 cables into them they can get a bit tight.
> 
> We have some new sites which are coming online that require up to 288 ports per floor, and these will not fit in the single rack provided for the floor if we use traditional cable management, once all the patching, switching, and UPS requirements are taken into account.  We will still have 750-800 mm wide racks, so I was hoping to find something that could be mounted at the side of the rack and protrude towards the front, so that we could use all the rack frontage for either patch panels or switch ports.  Some larger chassis switches seem to have this sort of thing built in, e.g. http://product-images.www8-hp.com/digmedialib/prodimg/lowres/c03131047.png
> 
> Searching Google suggests that there are plenty of options which look OK for low-density deployment, e.g. http://www.fibersavvy.com/store/i/is.aspx?path=/Shared/images/21_Cable%20Management/PP4-3197-1U_04.jpg&lr=t&bw=550&w=550&bh=550&h=550 but putting up to 48 Cat6 cables on that would not work, in my opinion.  What I was hoping to find is something that would allow cables to be laid in horizontally, more like the L-shaped lower part of our existing Krone cable management, but a little longer and a little wider (say, 70-90mm deep and 30mm wide), and possibly with a number of different channels in it to separate different groups of cables.
> 
> Does anyone know of such a system?  Are there other options which would allow us to cram in better Cat6 port densities?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Paul
> 
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