When we decided to expand our datacentre, we looked at making the task of patching “hands-off” for the servers guys. Which makes their jobs, and ours, a lot more straight forward.

The idea is to remove the need to perform patching from patchport -to-switchport whenever a new server or device is connected into the rackport. It also removes the requirement for staff to have to physically trace links from patchport-to-switchport.

So, what do I mean? Take a look at our work.

Our access level switches are Cisco 3750 E-series devices, six per switch stack. Our uplinks are 10Gbit GBICs, one at the top and one at the bottom. The above pictures are of our initial testing. I’ll paste up images of our final fitout, which includes Nic1 and Nic2 switches.

The great thing about this system is that the server guys only need to perform a lookup on a laminated table to discover the patchport-to-switchport mapping.

Advertisement