At 08:46 AM 6/27/2008, Troy Murray wrote:
>I'm trying to clean-up the rack of systems I inherited. One of the things that I'd like to do is clearly label the CAT5 cables from the server to the switch, etc. Just curious what others use to do this. Permanent marker on cable? Some type of tag or label affixed?
We've had a Rhino 6000 labeller for several months now. It can do vertical and horizontal wraparound as well as flag style labels for cables, as well as other types for labelling computers. It can also do series of labels, e.g. printing a whole series of patch-panel labels in one strip. It's a pretty nice instrument except for two things:
1. It's very easy to break the carbon film when you insert a new tape.
2. The smaller font sizes go from one extreme to another, with no in-between size like I really need. A previous labeller that we had (and which we used to death) was lacking in a lot of the features on the Rhino, but had better font size choices.
I've also bought some sheets of wraparound labels for laser-printer printing, but haven't tried them yet.
For fiber patch cords, we necessarily use flag-style labels. For Cat5-6 I prefer wraparound. Stefan prefers flag labels. We have a rule that whoever does the labelling gets to choose. The desire for each of us to have our own way motivates us not to put it off. There are still plenty of unlabeled cables around here, though.
Except on very short cables, each cable gets two (2) labels on each end. Each end gets a label identifying the distal and proximal connection. For example, a cable that connects port B3 on switch Gomphonema (all our switches are named after freshwater algae) to port 12 on patch panel 6 will have labels like this:
[Switch] --- GO-B3 ---- PP6-12 ---------------------------------- GO-B3 ---- PP6-12 --- [Patch panel]
Why label each end with both? Well, one thing you want to know is where the "other" end of a cable ends up after going through a twisty, tangled maze. The other label is handy if you're going to swap out a switch that has gone bad. You need to unplug everything, install the new switch, and plug everything back in again. That is no time to be sitting with a roll of tape and first making labels so you know where to plug things in again. (Been there, done that.) It's handy even when you unplug something temporarily, and need to put things back again after you've forgotten what you were doing.
We have something like 50 ProCurve switches in 25 locations, and I don't know how many patch panels, so there's always something that needs to be done involving labels. We follow the same principle with labeling cables that go from switches to servers or other infrastructure devices.
John Gorentz
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station
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