Data Cabinet Tidy Essentials
A tidy communications cabinet (comms cabinet) has three defining features: equipment, cables and their respective connections which are easy to identify. Equipment and cables are segregated by function and connections, and cables have correct routing parameters such as length and bend radius. All three factors are essential for efficient network management and growth: combined, they ensure the quality of maintenance operations, thermal management, and H&S regulation compliance, and support further scaling of the company’s core network capabilities.
Historically, data cabinet tidy services have been employed to reduce mounting maintenance costs within the data centre environment. The high port density of modern network equipment (with 24, 48, or even 96 ports per unit or more) inherently results in a high cable density of the modern data centre, with hundreds of cables going between various devices, sometimes spread across several cabinets. As the complexity of the network grows, so does the congestion inside the cabinets, especially when cable management protocols are not followed. Identifying the cable responsible for an unstable connection, confirming that a physical connection exists when two devices do not link up, and inspecting or replacing bad cables are routine maintenance operations which become inefficient and error-prone when patch cords are twisted around each other in a jumbled mess and cannot be identified through any distinctive feature, such as colour or labelling.