12/18/2000
Here you can see the new V-bolts installed on the racks, two per rack. You can also see the rack identification labels to the right of the left V-bolt on each rack.
12/18/2000
This picture shows a detail of the newly-installed ladder rack. We've placed 12" ladder in a front-to-back configuration (across rows) over every other rack, with side-to-side ladder rack between them, above the racks. This side-to-side ladder is positioned as far to the back of the row as it can be, resting up against the plates of the V-bolts in the front. This is necessary in order to be able to add the fiber duct support brackets later on.
12/03/2000
While it's somewhat hard to see because of the light fixture, this is a free-hanging ladder "tail" which is attached to the front-to-back ladder at only the left side - the right side isn't connected to anything and can bounce around.
12/03/2000
This picture shows the site after the ladder and coax cables have been removed. The cable ties visible on the left-hand row are supporting fiber optic cables inside innerduct, which used to sit on the ladders.
12/18/2000
This view shows the aisle between rows 5 and 4, looking toward 5.01/4.01. You can see the ladders that connect the aisles as well as the sidewall ladder on top of row 5 and normal ladder on top of row 4.
12/03/2000
This is a view of the plywood that the carrier innerducts/fiber are supposed to be attached to. The blue and black cables coiled on the floor are the Ethernet and coax cables we removed to relocate the NTT handoff, and will be re-attached later. The other loops are as the various carriers left them. In a later picture you'll see how we neatened this up.
12/18/2000
This is the carrier slack innerduct on the plywood after we neatened it up and attached the innerduct to the plywood. Also, the coax and Ethernet cables have been re-installed on the ladder.
12/18/2000
The contractor routed Ethernet cables through the 24" ladder rack, despite our telling them that that space was needed for jumper cables. Additionally, the 24" ladder with side rails (to hold jumpers), which we provided to the contractor, was not used.
This picture shows the re-routing of the cables out of the ladder rack (which has been removed) and into a cable management bracket on the rear of the rack. This involved cutting the ladder with a power hacksaw as the contractor had routed the cables through the rungs.
12/18/2000
At the same time this work was going on, we re-mounted the Catalyst 6509 switches using the proper mounting brackets. Previously, they had simply been placed on shelves. The power cables have been dressed and tie-wrapped and the plugs replaced with twist-lock ones to prevent inadvertent outages while work is being done under the floor.
Side note/diatribe: It seems that almost no vendors bother reading the published industry specs for rack mount ears. On the brackets in this picture, the ends of the brackets stick out 1/2" past the side of the rack. If we didn't have these cabling sections (instead, having racks bolted to each other) we wouldn't be able to mount switches in adjacent racks. As it is, we had to machine the brackets to be able to put the cabling section covers on. Cisco makes 2 additional mistakes - on much of their equipment (2900XL's, 75xx, etc.) there isn't enough clearance between the end of the mounting hole and the inside edge of the bracket. Juniper makes the same mistake on the M20 brackets, though oddly the M40 is Ok. Foundry does the same thing on the BI4000. Cisco has yet another foulup on the 2500 series - the upper and lower mounting holes are dimpled, don't line up with the rack holes, and are too small. This leaves only a single hole in the center of the bracket, which has the usual inadequate clearance problem. The 2600 gets it better - the upper and lower holes are the right size, having only the clearance problem.
12/18/2000
Here you can see a detail of the Catalyst mounting bracket, including the cuts needed to mount the bracket on the rack (look at the top and bottom of the bracket, where the web of the bracket angles in. The dangling cables are the out-of-band console and Gigabit Ethernet fiber, which will be re-routed later on.
04/15/2001
As promised, the dangling cables have been properly dressed. At the top right of the picture you can see the fiber protected by spiral wrap tubing. Additionally, the line cards have been swapped - a 16-port Gigabit Ethernet card is now in slot 3, and a pair of enhanced QOS RJ45 cards have replaced the telco card and un-enhanced RJ45 cards from the earlier picture.
12/18/2000
This is a view from the top of the completed ladder rack, looking toward rack 5.06. Note the ladder with sidewall over the front row of racks. This is needed to support the large number of CAT 5 jumpers that will be installed between the Catalyst switches and the patch panels. |