MDS 9513 - rack or cabinet ?

I'm willing to bet this is a concern only because the new connectrix cabinet model is quite a bit wider than its predecessor. it now takes more than the standard 19" cabinet takes.

We struggled with this a few years back when we replaced our ED144's with Cisco 9513's. Apparently, the extra width is for cooling requirements.

we went with the Connectrix Cabinet, even with its hefty girth. Our 9513's don't run hot so not sure if the cooling requirement is realized.

Jim

Those look like the Panduit fiber cassettes. Those are awesome, I wish we had the budget to put in something like that. We were getting ready to build a new data center and I put together a complete Panduit cable management solution. I had lofty visions of well organized cables and top of rack panels filled with beautiful aqua blue fiber cassettes. I was in Anal-Retentive-IT-Geek heaven. Then our CEO pulled the plug on the project (what recession?) and we are staying at our overpriced colo.

I am ashamed to say that we have no patch panels and that every fiber is run fron the 9509s to each host running through cable trays above the racks. Picture lots of zip ties and velcro ties. Our cage isn't that big, 45 racks and a little over 300 servers, so it isn't as bad as it sounds. But I know I deserve negative geek points for that.

If you have the opportunity to put in panels or cassettes, go for it. They are worth it in my opinion. If you put both swithces in one rack you should still have room for the patch panels or cassettes. Panduit has really good Visio tools for mapping out the switch and patch panel layout, I was able to design my whole infrastructure in Viso. It then has a plug-in to create a Bill of Materials from all the parts used in your Viso, so you know exactly what you need to purchase and can get an accurate quote based on that.

in terms of cable management, do you keep patch panels separate from your switch racks ?  We were thinking if we get two 9513, put them in one cabinet and use the extra space to install a patch panel in the cabinet itself. Not sure if that makes sense or not. What are you guys doing ? What patch management system are you using ? Any kind of MTP system ? Something like this http://www.mtp-mto-cassette.com/

I'm jealous Hersh.

What equipment did you end up getting?

that would be awesome, if you have some pics of your gear that you could share that would be great.  My email linuxrox@gmail.com

Thanks a bunch

We just put in what Aran was describing in our data center. Our physical planning group did it themselves which helped keep the costs down. It has made adding servers a breeze. I believe they used 2 Panduit racks which were a little larger then our standard APC 42u rack. We put 2 9509s in 1 rack and the patch system right next to it. If you're interested in knowing what products we used I could get that for you, just let me know.

Trunk and patch cables came from a company called Conexus Technologies. 2 trunks per cassette

Tilt drawers for the server racks - Pandiut

24 port cassettes (really only 12 connections since they count each fibre strand as a port) - Panduit

For the racks we used Panduit's NetAccess equipment, so racks and cable management parts.

hersh,

what is the model number of the rack you used to house 9513 ?

We put 2x9509s though in this. I think 9513 would work though because we have a few cable management things installed. I'll be posting pictures shortly of what we did.

Old cable trays to each server rack:

New Cable trays to each rack. I believe the max number of trunks to a rack with 2u servers is 8. To blade racks its only 4.

Old 9509 setup, we used to different racks so both looked like this.

New 9509 (we did move those orange cables so we weren't blocking the fan module if it needed replaced):

Head End Rack, next to the rack with both 9509s:

I don't have a picture of the server side where the pull down enclosures are located.

cool, thank you for sharing !!!

So now that you have gone through this process, what would you have done differently if you were to do it again ? Any lessons learned you can share ?