Machine room rack design, cabling?

[mooseAndSquirrel]

I am moving a datacenter out to one of these "hardened" sites, and have the opportunity to do everything from the ground up. I want to do things as close to perfectly as possible.

I have 6 42u cages that sit over 30" raised floor. Eventually I'll grow to 10 cages. Each cage has dual-sourced, primo power (no need to consume space on UPS or conditioners).

My current question is around patch panel and cabling. I am doing rack elevation diagrams now, but let's assume no more than 30 servers per rack. Each server will have 2 ethernet connections as well as IP KVM. So it looks like I'll need 90 patch panel RJ45 connections per cage.

My leftmost cage will be the communications rack. In it will be a Cisco router and switch (I'll post the model numbers shortly) and the IP KVM(s) (not completely sure how these work and if I need them to be out in the other cages). So for the potential of 9 cages with 90 ports, I'll need to eat a lot of this cage with cross connected patch panel ports (810!). How many ports can you get per rack U? If it's 48, then I'll eat 17U for patch panel, which wouldn't be all that bad.

But does that buy me anything (patch panel to patch panel)? Or should I just do server to patch panel and then patch panel directly to the switch? I am looking for 2 things - for my engineers to have an easy time installing and troubleshooting, and for my executive leadership to admire the professional look of the place. I don't want a vomit of cables.

Also, is there such a thing as a vertical patch panel that runs down the backside of a cage? In my mind's eye, that seems like it would help with cable vomit, since the cables would go from side to side without a lot or re-routing.

Finally, I'll take any advice from anybody that has done a great job with machine room builds.

Thanks!

 

[Czar]

could you post the diagram you have of your plan so we can get a better picture of what you are trying to do

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Yes, but probably not for another day or so.

 

[ColdZero]

While I haven't wired 6 42u racks in one place, I have done 3 at a time.

What you want to do is provide a way of not damaging the permenant connections on your infrastructure equipment and servers. So a cable from the server to a patch panel that has to be plugged in once. Then if a patch panel connector wears out, you can just replace that.

There are such things as verticle patch panels, but I've only ever seen them in 12 port configurations and they aren't 0u like you seem to be wanting. The densest patch panel I've see is 24ports per 1u. Also make sure you follow the physical limits of whatever cable you are using. 1" bends etc. and have cable strain relief. Don't forget the rack space that cable management will take up.

It may be easier for you to have all the patch panels in your communications cabinet rather than in each rack. If you could fit 41u of servers in each rack you'll need 4.5 racks for servers then have more left over for your communications stuff.

Hope this helps.

 

[piasabird]

Sounds nice. I work in an actual Data Room for a community college and we use regular servers like Dell Sells sitting on Chromed 6 foot shelves. With the exception of the 2 racks that everything plugs into where the switches and the routers everything else is on 3 chromed shelves. I have seen like troughs that go overhead between racks in diagrams and sales manuals. We did do some thing like that between our communication rack and the top of one of our shelves that we built ourselves, so you did not have to trip over the wires. Elsewhere they just organized it well and bundled the wire together and put a tie doo dadd around it.

Why they had to put the mainframe in the same room with both the Network gear and the Giant Rolm Phone Switch I will never Know. It was not planned to well. We use ATM patch panels and Fiber Optic cable Above the racks to go between the buildings. The ATM gear is getting kind of dated I dont think the people that made those patch panels is still in business. The other ATM gear is from IBM and it is a bit dated but still works well.

Basically I am a COBOL Programmer/job scheduler/program developer/do my own testing, so I dont do too much networking. We are inbetween computer systems right now. We run mainframe software on and IBM X-Server with Flex-ES to make the server look like a mainframe. It is pretty good for the interim until we go to our new database design. We will be ordering new equipment pretty soon. We mightupgrade the network just a little bit to get more throughput or something for the Internet. There is still talk of going to a VOIP Phone system, so the future looks bright.