Recently from my work a large sum of networking equipment was being liquidated as the previous tenet was relocating. This included a significant amount of network cable, four server racks, an array of patch panels and a little gear. I asked if I could take any of it and I was given the go ahead to take what I pleased.
What I ended up landing included three 2U 24 port keystone patch panels, eighty Cat5e keystones, some nice cuts of Cat5e UTP Plenum cable, and a SonicWall N DR access-point brand new in the box.
What I plan for this build log is sharing how I plan to break down, upgrade, and incorporate this equipment into my home-lab setup starting with removing all the keystones from the panels & old cable.
I will be re-using the old cable to create my very short patch cables going from each panel to their respective server. I will also be re-using as many of the keystones as I reasonably can while getting some OM3 LC keystones on order for my 10Gig fiber connections.
As it currently resides this is my homelab. Could look better. Could look worse. A bulk of the project is going to be cleaning up the cables as best I can so please don’t judge too harshly. 
The switches linking everything together reside in the closet adjacent to the server rack. I think I’ll be tiding up cables in here too.
The 1Gig RJ-45 switch is the Ubiquiti ES-48-Lite and the 10/40Gig SFP+/QSFP+ switch is the Dell Force10 S4810P. We’ll just be focusing on wiring the 1/10 connections to the patch panels. I plan to leave the QSFP+ DAC lines as they are.
I’m currently contemplating how I want to divide up the ports on the panel so I can decide how many keystones I need to buy and how many optical patch cables I’ll need. For now I think I’m going to settle on 8 LC/16 RJ-45 since each server generally needs 2 copper connections but only a single fiber line. If I decide I need more I can add another panel.
Unfortunately with this arrangement the setup is going to be less conventional. Where you’d normally have the patch panels mounted at the top of the rack in the front I’ll actually be installing this in the middle in the rear. Things will not be left like this permanently but for the time being it’s what will best suit the setup. I am thinking of putting one in the front below the KVM though for easy access to the network connections without fiddling around the back or having to fish a wire into the closet both of which suck to do. 
For now I’m going to decide how many of what I need. Get a shopping list on order and while we wait I can start with installing the panels and getting some copper connections ran! 
