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Hello All,

I’ve got a small problem that is making me think more than I should be. We’re about to retire our Netgear switches and put in our new HP ProCurves. However, the OCD in me can’t seem to find a way to connect them to the patch panel as cleanly as I did with the Netgears due to the port layout.

Our patch panel (48 ports) are laid out across first and then down (ports 1-24 on the top, and 25-48 on the bottom). The Netgear switches were laid out the same way and it was easy using our 1ft patch cable to go from port to port. The HP’s are laid out with all odd numbers across the top, and even numbers across the bottom.

I want all port numbers to match up between the PP and switch but the only thing I can think of would be something along the lines of the NeatPatch NP2 tray… Use longer 2ft cables looping back and coming out again. It doesn’t look as clean/simple and it’s not as easy to trace a cable compared to our 1ft’er setup but it’s all I can come up with.

Surely I’m overthinking this… what do you guys do?

7 Spice ups
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My philosophy is that patch panels are there to provide flexibility of which cable goes into which port. If you don’t want that, just remove the patch panel, terminate each cable with a plug and plug directly into the switch.

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I’ve got the exact same layout with our patch panels and HP ProCurves. Like you mentioned, I used a NeatPatch tray and 2ft patch cables.

I decided since the cables where long enough, and most of the spaghetti was going to be hidden in side the NeatPatch, that PatchPanel #1 was going to be attached to SwitchPort #1. It’s not as clean as I would have liked, but I prefer the ability to look at the switch for a given port # and see if the lights are blinking rather than track down a cable to see where it really does plug in. If Port #27 on the switch has blinking lights, then I know I have a connection.

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I ended up popping out the keystones on my patch panel and swapping some things around to overcome only half of our PoE switch providing power (by design). I am OCD about my cabling and now can relax and stare in awe.

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If it’s really that big a deal, cable is cheap. Just custom cut new cables. My experience is that a little slack (up to 12 inches) is a good thing, and is easily absorbed by cable managers. Otherwise, what difference does it make what port on the patch panel is attached particular ports on the switch? Just set the switch ports for the proper VLANs.

As for tracing cables later, I just label the ends: The patch panel end has the switch port # and vice versa.

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And I though I was OCD - wow!

I’ve done what Wayne said and what Sean said - any way you look at it, terminating cables is a tedious job… but the end result is tidy cables and that helps me sleep at night!

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I don’t consider patch panels to provide flexibility, in my eyes they’re simply a point to provide fixed termination. I’d rather have a neat and tidy 48 port patch panel than 48 wires dangling out of the wall.

As for the second part of your comment, I’ll be doing exactly that for all the servers and devices within the rack itself. Since those items are more likely to be plugged/unplugged or moved around, I’d rather plug them directly into a switch without having them go through a patch panel first.

To each their own I guess, what works well in one environment may not work in another…

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We must be thinking alike, seems like NeatPatch is the way to go in this case. Glad to hear it’s working for you, I’ve got my CDW rep looking into a couple of them as it wasn’t listed on their website.

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It is a bit of OCD but there’s more to it than that. Sure a neat patch job looks great, but it also makes other things easier.

Documentation concerning endpoint to switch connection is simplified if not eliminated; I don’t need a chart to tell me which office is connected to which port on the patch panel and then which port it’s connected to on the switch.

VLAN’ing on the switch is also cleaner… I can put sequential ports on one VLAN, instead of random ports which I’ll most likely need a table to decipher.

So yeah, there is some goodness in doing it this way… but it’s certainly not the ONLY way of doing things.

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NeatPatch all the way!! Here’s an install that I did with them and 2 ProCurves.

IMG00115-20110811-0954.jpg
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1 Spice up
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Follow-up…

Got a NeatPatch for one of my switch/Patch panel sets and it works great! The 2’ cables are short enough that they don’t need to be labeled but long enough to reach from one side of the rack to the other. My only gripe would be with the stiffness of the CAT6 patch leads I’m using, maybe I’ll get CAT 5e instead on my next cable purchase.

I’ve only done half the switch as I need to wait for a bit of downtime but all in all I have to say it’s a great solution. Thanks to everybody who replied, always nice to hear how others manage similar situations!

2 Spice ups