Cabling: What to keep in stock?

Solution 1:

The type / number and length is going to be affected by what you tend to use a lot -- if everything's cabled up to a switch (or patch panel) in that same rack, you're going to stock shorter cables than if everything has to run to a dedicated network rack. I do always try to keep a couple of insanely long cables (that can go across the room with some slack) for those times when you just need to put something in temporarily.

Labeling's only useful if you have tight control over the people allowed to run cables -- someone goes and recycles a cable without cutting the old labels off of it, and you're screwed ... I tend to trace out the cables by hand.

As for inventory management -- it probably depends if you're the only person, or have a large team; when I worked at a university, with nine people in our office, and you'd go to get a (whatever), and there'd be none left, it would really piss me off. (If it was cables, I could borrow something from the networking or windows admins, but for cards and sun-specific stuff, we were screwed). I had suggested something that I saw in a hospital room -- a checklist of 'this cabinet should be stocked with ...', and have someone responsible for checking it each week, and making sure there's enough of everything in there.

We just had cabinets sorted by general type (network cables, disks & scsi cables, power cables & power supplies, console adaptors / network cards / everything else)

Solution 2:

• Buy pre-made - you get a decent price if you dont buy on the shop around the corner, and it is not worth the effort.
• inventory management - mostly not at all. Box with cables of different lengths. DO NOT FORGET POWER CABLES - sometimes they turn sour, too.
• Adapters: yes, some - not a lot, tough. Dont use many at all these days, as most motherboards have enough.