The IT room is an essential part of an organization’s infrastructure. It could take the form of a telecommunications room or any space with low-voltage cabling that also houses technology equipment such as switches, routers, servers, and other IT resources used to transmit, process, and store valuable information.
However, these rooms have a tendency to become disorganized and morph into a tangled mess.. When cable management is not prioritized, cabling can quickly become unmanageable. Poor wire management and tangled cables can make accessing equipment more difficult and when performing moves, adds, and changes (MAC) work, the disorganized cabling increases the risk of someone mistakenly disconnecting or damaging cables, resulting in network outages or reduced performance.
Messy cables also detract from the professional appearance of your IT room. Appearance matters; a clean and organized IT room will make a positive impression on visitors, employees, and clients, while disorganized cable management will have the opposite effect. An organized IT room helps to improve not only efficiency, but also the professional appearance of your organization.
Blue Wave Communications has years of experience in transforming disorganized low-voltage cabling into more attractive and more functional layouts. These cable management redesigns and cable clean up efforts not only improved appearance, but also accessibility for daily maintenance as well as future upgrades since the network cables and power cords are now neatly routed, labeled and easier to find. Previously, these IT rooms were a Gordian knot of tangled cabling and atrocious cord management.
Blue Wave’s Most Shocking IT Room Cable Management Transformations
Check out our examples of shocking cable management transformations. If the Before pictures look similar to your own IT room, it may be time to consider a cabling intervention.
Example1: Before & After
This example of a cable management transformation depicts the rear of a row of equipment racks with serious cable organization issues. In the Before picture, the cabling is obviously messy and spilling out onto the floor. Although vertical cable management had been installed on the racks, it was not being used very effectively, if at all. Of primary concern was how power was being distributed to all the equipment mounted on the three racks. A UPS had been installed but it was not sufficiently sized to accommodate all the equipment nor did it allow for redundancy. Lastly, the network cables interconnecting all the equipment were haphazardly installed from the front to the rear for rear-facing equipment connections with little thought placed on labeling.
In the After photo, it is easy to see that things were significantly improved and much more organized. Additional UPS units were installed along with Primary and Secondary vertical PDUs (Power Distribution Units) for each rack. This provided a more balanced and organized distribution of power to the UPS units in the event of a power failure and allowed for an increased level of redundancy for critical equipment.
Blue Wave also installed static Category-6 cables from the front of the rack housing the core switch to the top-rear of the other two racks. These cables were terminated on patch panels at both ends which allowed a more organized means of connecting equipment with rear-facing connections without having to route individual patch cables from the front to the rear.
Example 2: Before & After
This chaotic cable organization looks like a pot of boiling spaghetti spilled out all over the place. Needless to say, this particular customer was experiencing quite a bit of frustration due to frequent outages and having to spend significant time identifying and correcting issues. Often while troubleshooting one issue, the customer would cause another issue because they had inadvertently disconnected a cable elsewhere. The primary issues were related to insufficiently sized horizontal cable managers and using patch cables that were entirely too long. These two issues combined to create this incredible mess.
Blue Wave’s cable clean up effort to organize things began with painstaking documentation of all network connections which was later used to reconnect all the equipment. We used the existing vertical and horizontal cable managers but installed new patch cables that were properly sized. This reduced the majority of the clutter and allowed the cables managers to be better utilized.
Check out more of our success gallery to see other cable management transformations.
Blue Wave’s Cable Management Solutions
Leave the frustration and stress of messy cabling in the past and untangle your IT room with Blue Wave’s cable management solutions. Blue Wave will help you clear out the clutter with our cable clean up service by starting with an initial assessment of your IT room(s) to identify critical systems and develop an implementation plan for reorganizing and making things more functional.
Our trusted and experienced specialists will make sure to get the job done right the first time so you can rest assured that our dedicated team of experts is committed to your ultimate satisfaction.
Are you ready for a more organized IT room? Reach out to us to set up a cabling intervention - you’ll thank us later! Or, contact us to learn more information about our other services and what sets Blue Wave apart.
