It's like 16 Hours... I do such things in my free time to calm down and comfort myself... It's a simple work and you can see your progress. Only if you have to keep all systems live/online it's a bit of a fuckery. Because you need to bridge everything with other hardware redundant... That's making it longer. Closed business on the weekends = jackpot
I've 100% done that. Was on a temp work job and my job was to organize and tidy up the cable closet. (Not nearly this bad). Found two cables I couldn't trace. They went into the wall and just disappeared. My boss said "pull them and see who yells at you".
Still not the worst I've seen. In 1999 our servers kept crashing. We were drop shipping $10,000 severs overnight to fix things because AWS didn't exist yet. Finally I DROVE to the center and found our servers literally stacked on the floor with fucking walmart level power strips and somebody had their lunch sitting on the stack. We actually kept using them because my boss "got a deal" on pricing
Car loan bank did IT support for switched to generic print cartridges that leaked within 2 weeks of being swapped out. A lot of these documents were legal & had to be tossed out and reprinted, sometimes taking 3 for 4 tries to get a good set. I informed management of the problem, wasted paper, and how they ran a big risk of service calls getting charged off contract (and they eventually did. $$$). 'Do you know how much money we are saving by switching to generic cartridges?'
We paid serious coin (like $68k in Bush Sr-era dollars) for a Dec Alphastation - and it came with a power strip screwed into the side of the case. Was a "special" power strip that sequenced the drive startup, but still some pretty janky looking stuff direct from the mfr.
Back in the early 2000s one of my friends was hired as a IT consultant to clean up a room like this so that they could upgrade their system. He hired me and one other guy, we worked on Saturdays and Sundays for a month, Unplugging each cable tracing it back, labeling it, and plugging it in without snags. We went into the office and put two pieces of blue tape on every computer, switch and server in the office before we started and wrote a name on both, one stayed there one went on the cable.
Worked in a DC for 10 years and while our main ones weren't this bad, there was one closet that no one went into. I asked why. They opened the doors and it was just.....
"Hello, Farmer's insurance? Our website went down for 6 hours... because ran out a doe. No, not ran outta dough, like out of money. Like chased out a deer." We covered it.
That or "This will have to be done after hours to not impact operations, so we'll need you to work until midnight each day until it is done. No we need you to do your normal hours too, we can't spare any downtime. That's why you're salary after all, right?"
Serious question (after too many decades in IT) - what is this really? This doesn't look like entropy of a data center - this isn't like any data center I've ever been in. But maybe a hastily assembled mining operation or bot farm? Or maybe a BDF for a bad hotel?
Probably a combination of laziness, not giving a shit, lack of budget and apathy. That and potentially a high turnover where new people have no clue what the stuff does so they just run new cables overtop the old for fear of taking down critical systems.
Not a commercial data center, looks like a phone room that became a network closet, and the network took the bad path to wifi/voip based on the number of poe injectors. This is the logical endpoit of the old accounting owns IT mindset, every descision is about minimizing short term cost with little or no concern for long term effects. No bot farm would have poe or a little of cat cable with few servers. This looks like long term entropy to me.
Agreed. Doesn't look much like a data center. I think you're onto something with a bad hotel. Maybe voice comms for a large building? Most everything looks like patch panels. I'm not sure how much of that is live, but it doesn't look like all that much. And the little bit of actual gear I can see looks like it is voice stuff.
There's at least 1 switch in there for sure, and yep def patch panels. Plus a lot of odd looking transceivers/dongles. What i don't see is the requisite amount of *rackable* equipment that would need that much cabling. Why I'm thinking bot-farm using tablets or smartphones or something just piled into the trays with usb ethernet transceivers instead of cellular or wifi.
This is the same thing I was thinking. I don't care if I'm the IT guy that inherits a room full of zip ties. Print this picture and put a note on it that says "this is how it started, all I had were zip ties" and I'll be buying you a beer. Zip ties are quick and easy to replace, fixing that rats nest is going to take weeks.
2 options. 1. Document everything, pull everything and cable from scratch. 2. Replace 1 cable at a time. Both are shit, but option 1 usually ends up with a better outcome.
I don't do it professionally, only for personal use and helping friends and family with their home setups. Plus the ones I use are a bit wider than typical zip ties so they aren't as constricting or as bad about pressure points.
Not if you get wider ones like I do. I can also 3D print specific designs for larger bunches of cables that work better for niche scenarios than the store bought ones.
The tightness combine with the rigid material is what crushes it, hoss. Wider would just spread out the damage. Working with cisco data-fabric cables and fragile backbone or blown air craft style fiber optic used in high end data centers is a totally different animal. That could work in a lab or a shop closest but not on an enterprise scale.
sure. it looks probably way worse than it is.most of it looks like it is just extra length It would be a pretty penny to clean up, but it is absolutely doable.
That is at least 12 man hours if you know where everything is and its well documented. 30-60 hours if its documented how it looks. I wouldn't quote anything under $8k for that job.
TheRicM
Uh-oh, spaghetti-o
UniversalEngineer
IVoted4Pedro
Me thinking I can rewire my brain to like broccoli.
InfocalypseRising
3ScreebsInATrenchcoat
I think I'm gonna be sick
yomammyboy
Obligatory Imgur server room comment.
hotdoginathermos
chatawillybilly
The guy who left an uneaten sandwich on the dirty ass chair had his hands in this mess.
omegaprimus01
I mean it would be cheaper to burn all that down and collect the insurance money and building it all back.
lokisadvisor
And faster
TheHappyHermit
clearly made by rodents of unusual size
maas2908
I worked at this one place that had a room like that, and in the center of it all there was this server that was perpetually glowing. It worked too.
IHaveAGuyForEverything
Yeah… that’s gonna need an outage window or two to fully resolve.
EpicAwesomeWin
...my heart ... ow!
ConveyEmotionsViaGifs
Myothercarisadelorean
HavetsHerren
Modular synths? Jeez.
luxter7
UselessCommenting
It's like 16 Hours... I do such things in my free time to calm down and comfort myself... It's a simple work and you can see your progress. Only if you have to keep all systems live/online it's a bit of a fuckery. Because you need to bridge everything with other hardware redundant... That's making it longer. Closed business on the weekends = jackpot
SupposablyPersnickity
I wonder what this cable is for…
*unplugs*
*sirens in the distance*
Ok, not that one!
Isthe4thtimethecharm
Wait a minute, did I just hear 3 flips of the light switch? Come on.
Skankkid99
Don't worry, that's just the "everything is okay alarm"
DemonDarakna
I would 100% do that.
wazeewa
I've 100% done that. Was on a temp work job and my job was to organize and tidy up the cable closet. (Not nearly this bad). Found two cables I couldn't trace. They went into the wall and just disappeared. My boss said "pull them and see who yells at you".
ProffesorGoogle
20 minutes in and out quick job
RoboUnicornFishBalls
My answer:
nothingunused
Take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
FlyingButtPliers
Still not the worst I've seen. In 1999 our servers kept crashing. We were drop shipping $10,000 severs overnight to fix things because AWS didn't exist yet. Finally I DROVE to the center and found our servers literally stacked on the floor with fucking walmart level power strips and somebody had their lunch sitting on the stack. We actually kept using them because my boss "got a deal" on pricing
Canofminus
Car loan bank did IT support for switched to generic print cartridges that leaked within 2 weeks of being swapped out. A lot of these documents were legal & had to be tossed out and reprinted, sometimes taking 3 for 4 tries to get a good set. I informed management of the problem, wasted paper, and how they ran a big risk of service calls getting charged off contract (and they eventually did. $$$). 'Do you know how much money we are saving by switching to generic cartridges?'
flornholio
We paid serious coin (like $68k in Bush Sr-era dollars) for a Dec Alphastation - and it came with a power strip screwed into the side of the case. Was a "special" power strip that sequenced the drive startup, but still some pretty janky looking stuff direct from the mfr.
LordHosk
Back in the early 2000s one of my friends was hired as a IT consultant to clean up a room like this so that they could upgrade their system. He hired me and one other guy, we worked on Saturdays and Sundays for a month, Unplugging each cable tracing it back, labeling it, and plugging it in without snags. We went into the office and put two pieces of blue tape on every computer, switch and server in the office before we started and wrote a name on both, one stayed there one went on the cable.
RonnieKielbasa
I'm a network analyst and I just threw up
wazeewa
Worked in a DC for 10 years and while our main ones weren't this bad, there was one closet that no one went into. I asked why. They opened the doors and it was just.....
fractalsphere
If I saw this on a tour during a job interview, I'd look them dead in the eye and triple my salary requirement.
RobJenkins
Burn it down and rebuild, it'll take less time
EnchantingWzrdOfRiven
Don’t forget to collect on the insurance money.
EscalatorCongestion
as a network engineer i can 100% confirm and agree...
AnotherSnarkyComment
Cowards. You need about a dozen packets of various length cables, one overnight and a concrete constitution.
malexmatt
Having just done this a few weeks ago, I can confirm.
Valkyyria
One Overnight? What are you? The Flash?
Redyls
god i hate it. thanks @OP
IamJACKSventedSPLEEN
PixelSprite64
Pfff... So its just a mess? Let me know when you got wildlife in there
dontWasteBandwithWithBadMemes
Bugs have evolved
wazeewa
Ah yes, I remember that. Had my group laughing their asses off.
Euchre
"Hello, Farmer's insurance? Our website went down for 6 hours... because ran out a doe. No, not ran outta dough, like out of money. Like chased out a deer." We covered it.
cosinewave
I was tasked to clean up messes like this more than once. It is entropy and every data center and wiring closet is subject to it to some degree.
Ark161
it can be minimized if it is built with scaling/refresh in mind. but alas, it is rare anyone ever does.
Frederf
"Oh and don't unplug anything while you do it. It's in use."
Badprenup
That or "This will have to be done after hours to not impact operations, so we'll need you to work until midnight each day until it is done. No we need you to do your normal hours too, we can't spare any downtime. That's why you're salary after all, right?"
mav81
Nope. That’s why I’m quitting 😂
SavageDrums
The first time I walked into that room I'd be quitting.
ChloeRed
One of my clients is in a pair of shared racks. I re did all our our cabling in new cables, with colours selected of ones the other 1/
ChloeRed
company (who own the building) hadn't used. We ended up with orange and lilac cables, but _ours_ are tidy... 2/2
flornholio
Serious question (after too many decades in IT) - what is this really? This doesn't look like entropy of a data center - this isn't like any data center I've ever been in. But maybe a hastily assembled mining operation or bot farm? Or maybe a BDF for a bad hotel?
wazeewa
Probably a combination of laziness, not giving a shit, lack of budget and apathy. That and potentially a high turnover where new people have no clue what the stuff does so they just run new cables overtop the old for fear of taking down critical systems.
ChloeRed
It's what happens when a building's data needs grow when there's no budget (or the will to do anything) to expand it properly and 1/
ChloeRed
multiple people/contractors work on it. 2/2
insanumingenium
Not a commercial data center, looks like a phone room that became a network closet, and the network took the bad path to wifi/voip based on the number of poe injectors. This is the logical endpoit of the old accounting owns IT mindset, every descision is about minimizing short term cost with little or no concern for long term effects. No bot farm would have poe or a little of cat cable with few servers. This looks like long term entropy to me.
flornholio
Rodger that.
ilwrath
Agreed. Doesn't look much like a data center. I think you're onto something with a bad hotel. Maybe voice comms for a large building? Most everything looks like patch panels. I'm not sure how much of that is live, but it doesn't look like all that much. And the little bit of actual gear I can see looks like it is voice stuff.
flornholio
There's at least 1 switch in there for sure, and yep def patch panels. Plus a lot of odd looking transceivers/dongles. What i don't see is the requisite amount of *rackable* equipment that would need that much cabling. Why I'm thinking bot-farm using tablets or smartphones or something just piled into the trays with usb ethernet transceivers instead of cellular or wifi.
Ark161
velcro straps my dude. zipties are for shit that isnt going to be moved.
Euchre
https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY Don't Say Velcro
Thranx
velcro in the front, zip ties in the back
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
That's what I had at my last corpo job - plenty of wire bundles that weren't going to be touched until decom.
PurifiedInTheWatersOfLakeMinnetonka
Zipties really shouldn’t be used for network cabling at all. Velcro all the way.
LoveDjinn
THANK YOU! As an IT Guy I hate zip ties with a fiery passion. Use Velcro!
Axianamos
Can't use velcro in a hospital. Has to be zip ties or twist ties. And twist ties don't work.
lordsupafly
The zipties aren't for the cables. They are for the persons responsible for this mess.
spontaneous9
THIS!
imredheaded
Ziptie to start for ease and speed, then circle back around once it is cleaned up and replace zipties with velcro.
Mxlespxles
Tell that to my fellow coworkers...
Understopper
Fellow coworkers is unnecessarily redundant
kanemano
not until the ransom is paid
Lionheart4G
I agree on the velcro being superior. However, in this case, I don't think either velcro or zip ties will do this spaghetti nightmare any good.
bonsaitree
This is the same thing I was thinking. I don't care if I'm the IT guy that inherits a room full of zip ties. Print this picture and put a note on it that says "this is how it started, all I had were zip ties" and I'll be buying you a beer. Zip ties are quick and easy to replace, fixing that rats nest is going to take weeks.
FlippedOut
2 options. 1. Document everything, pull everything and cable from scratch. 2. Replace 1 cable at a time. Both are shit, but option 1 usually ends up with a better outcome.
Gestalt7
Only the lick of flame will clear them of their sins
MaterialisticWorm
I don't think they'll have to wait long, this looks like quite the hazardous setup
MeekrabJones
Unless you do what I do and get reusable zip ties. They may cost a bit more than regular zip ties, but they're still way cheaper than Velcro.
manymemesabound
Zip ties are horrible on the cables. I'd definitely go velcro for the little bit extra.
MeekrabJones
I don't do it professionally, only for personal use and helping friends and family with their home setups. Plus the ones I use are a bit wider than typical zip ties so they aren't as constricting or as bad about pressure points.
neaxi
looking at Amazon velcro is like $10 for 50ft in the US ... sure, resuable zipties might still be cheaper but velcro is imho easier on manipulation
FattsoCattso
Re-usable?? TIL@
AyrA
They have an extended lip that you can lift to release them.
SlightlyAnnoyedDwarf
Nah. There's a special place in hell for people who use zipties in a network closet.
Spartan9365
Depends on where you are, rolls of velcro are fairly cheap when you buy in bulk. Zip ties are also prone to crumpling cables.
MeekrabJones
Not if you get wider ones like I do. I can also 3D print specific designs for larger bunches of cables that work better for niche scenarios than the store bought ones.
Spartan9365
The tightness combine with the rigid material is what crushes it, hoss. Wider would just spread out the damage. Working with cisco data-fabric cables and fragile backbone or blown air craft style fiber optic used in high end data centers is a totally different animal. That could work in a lab or a shop closest but not on an enterprise scale.
MeekrabJones
Again, they're for home use. I already stated that, hoss. They aren't that tight, nor are they holding high-end fiber optic cable.
jpl5
Would you dare move anything in that room?
novagalaxias
I would honestly love to. As a previous network engineer, this image is killing me
iamlegendinjapan
Especially with all of those splitters
Bollokovski
Absolutely I would move stuff in there. First move would be about 10lb of C4
TheMightyElk
I would drop the whole network and redo it especially with those splitters
EverNotRelevant
Sure! I'd move myself and walk away
Fryfryfryfry
I'd have a jolly good time in there tidying that up, might take a few days, but it would be really enjoyable
Ark161
sure. it looks probably way worse than it is.most of it looks like it is just extra length It would be a pretty penny to clean up, but it is absolutely doable.
Teledabby
hate this damn splitters, but yeah. just to long cables.
scr1bbl3
Duplex be damned!
Ruderali
That is at least 12 man hours if you know where everything is and its well documented. 30-60 hours if its documented how it looks. I wouldn't quote anything under $8k for that job.
daugbret
Do you think it would end up being easier and faster to just empty that room and put new stuff in there?
Ruderali
Depends what the documentation is like and the complexity of their stack.