Cable Management

Having a nice and tidy server room (or closet in most cases) with a properly organized cable system is imperative to rapid deployment and trouble-shooting what should be simple network solutions. Re-organizing tangled network cables is simply an invetment that pays off when you need to figure it out fast. It also makes you appear more professional in front of your bosses, clients and fellow Know-it-all's that don't. Most server rooms I´ve seen (in small to medium businesses) are a usually built with little or no regard for cable management. Here's some simple things to organize and keep your patch panel looking professional and organized.

1- Make a connectivity map. Put down (on paper) the location of all devices running in your environment and assign them a number.

2- Use these numbers to tag each device and their location on your patch panel.

3- Disconnect all network cables going from the patch panel to the switches and re-plug them in an orderly manner. If you can get your hands on colored cables, use a color scheme to categorize devices (I.E. Servers could use red cables, printers yellow ones and workstations could use traditional blue ones).