ESX Cable Labling - Best Practices

[GauranG1]

Would greatly appreciate if anyone can help with STANDARD OR BEST practices when it comes to do Labling Cables for ESX boxes (Specially when they have Multiple NICS.

[kjb007]

How do you label inter-switch connections? I would label the interface cables similar to how you label those. You probably want which switch, and which vlan's you are allowing over the connection. May be too much on the label, but more info is better than less.

-KjB

[bggb29]

Now that 3.5 supports cdp if you use a cisco switch. It is easy to identify which server and which nic is connected to a port.

I still use the description field on the switch. I now enable cdp in both directions on the vswitch.

I also use identical nics and slots on all my esx hosts to make identification easier. With that said I do not label a cable

itself, I use the switch and cdp

[ServerAdmins · Accepted solution]

We label the ESX end of the cable with phyiscal switch number, physical switch port, vlan number and vmnic number. That helps us heaps.

The label looks something like this: 5/43 vlan8 vmnic1

Hope this helps.