Sysadmin Toolbox FAQ

Many thanks for significant contributions to this FAQ from Chris Allerman, Richard Chycoski, Donal Cunningham, Pete Ehlke, Dan Foster, Gene, DJ Gregor, Michael T. Halligan, Doug Hanks, Robert Harker, Dave Hilton, Alan Horn, Hans Jacobsen, Stephen L. Johnson, Jeff Jonas, Brad Knowles, Adam & Christine Levin, Jens Link, Nadine, Marco Nicosia, Cat Okita, Jan L. Peterson, Dan Rich, Jeff Richardson, Etaoin Shrdlu, Bob Sutterfield, Chuck Yerkes, and Ulf Zimmerman.

 

Why do we need a toolbox these days when so many machines are leased or under service contract?

There are many reasons to have a toolkit, even if your duties never involve opening up a machine to fix components. Some of these include:

  • Assembling rack mounts and slides
  • Installing cable management
  • Opening up a jack or cable to check the inside wiring
  • Labelling servers, wiring, external peripherals

The reality for most sites, though, is that one ends up doing a certain amount of hardware fiddling: swapping peripherals such as drives, cards, fans, power supplies, etc. Machines that are easy or inexpensive to replace are not likely to be under maintainance contract, as it is often more cost-effective to self-service them.

You may want to start by looking at the Sysadmin Site Kit and the Sysadmin Basic Kit. Then return here for extended discussions of the pros and cons of various tools and techniques as provided by our advisors. Please feel free to offer advice about tools we may have missed, or new versions of existing tools, and advice based on your experience. Send us your feedback.

Combos & Basics

What do folks carry around with them all the time?

The basics tend to be a multi-tool and a light of some kind. Other items will vary widely depending on whether your primary duties involve supporting desktop users, a server room, a hardware lab, etc.

Common additional "always in my pocket or belt pouch" items include:

  • single-blade pocket knife, e.g. Spyderco clip-on
  • cable ties
  • mirror, ideally the extendable telescoping mirror found at most auto-parts stores
  • tweezers, forceps, or extensible small-part grabbers
  • silly putty or blue-tack (theatre tack), for non-conductive grabs of small parts, dust, etc
  • roll or tube of dental picks

OK, so what are the best kinds of multi-tools and lights?

Just like we wouldn't tell you to prefer vi or vim over Emacs, we wouldn't presume to tell you which gadgets are "best" or "essential." However, while we don't officially endorse any specific item, some clear favorites emerged from community suggestions. There's a strong bias towards LED light solutions, and a kit or two to convert old favorites to LED.

  • Multi-tool
    • ThinkGeek Swiss Geek Knife
    • The new Leatherman Crunch, with locking (vise-grip) pliers that fold away and all tools lock into position
    • Leatherman Wave (with quarter-inch drive attachment & bits) [the 9-in-1 Precision Tool, a mini version, and SuperTool, an older version, also had their advocates]
    • Swiss Army (Victorinox) CyberTool (no pliers, though)
    • Gerber Multi-Plier
  • Lights
    • LED light key fobs: indispensable, and widely available for under a buck or so with white LED. A number of them have screw cases, allowing you to replace the battery. The kind with the little switch that you can click on are more helpful than the squeeze type.
    • Mini-maglites are the former gold-standard for keychain or pocket lights. Fortunately for LED fans, there are excellent retrofit kits, in particular the MiniStar2.
    • Petzl compact lamps have some dedicated fans, including devotees of the various headlamps and the Petzel Zipka, a head or wristband lamp.

What's the basic minimum for a personal toolkit? The kind you keep in your desk, or carry around in a little bag?

Many folks feel that real screwdrivers are sufficiently useful that every sysadmin onsite should have a dedicated set, rather than using a shared toolbox. At the very least, an inexpensive 4-in-1 type screwdrivers, with a large and a small each of philips and standard slotted tips.

Better still a good quality philips, standard, and torx set such as the Craftsman 12 pc Micro Tech Precision Screwdriver set.

For the gadgeteers in the crowd, there was a strong recommendation for the Klein 10-way combination screwdriver, "NOT a gimmicky combo job" and including some basic nut-drivers as well as torx, square-tip, philips, and standard tips.

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Human Factors

I work in the data center a lot—is there anything special I can do to be more effective?

Seasoned data center veterans realize that when you have to be in the data center for many hours, you have to take care of yourself to keep from making mistakes that will keep you there even longer.

  • Keep a fleece jacket or vest in your kit, or in the machine room. The cold can really slow you down in a fairly short time.
  • Include some kind of snack or protein bar in your toolkit, so you can step out of 'the freezer' for a few minutes and eat something.
  • Hearing protectors are a great idea for data centers. Remember that hearing loss is cumulative, so protecting yourself now can delay or prevent future hearing loss.
  • If you do a lot of repair or cabling work, requiring sitting or kneeling on the floor, keep a small foam pad or some eggcrate packing foam handy. It's nice to have an insulating layer, as well as padding, between your knees or seat and that cold raised floor.

What's the scoop on hearing protectors and noise-cancelling headsets?

Ear plugs can be helpful, but be cautious about products designed for gun ranges or blasting safety. They are designed to protect against bursts of intense sound, not against the "wall of sound" effect of hundreds of fans and power supplies.

Several folks wrote in to advise us that data center noise tends to be continuous (fans, power supplies) and in a lower range than many commercial ear protectors are designed to mitigate. One must take into account "A" weighting as well as "C" weighting:

A-weighting is only really valid for relatively quiet sounds and for pure tones as it is based on the 40-phon Fletcher-Munson curves which represented an early determination of the equal-loudness contour for human hearing. The B and C curves were intended for louder sounds (though they are less used) while the D curve is used in assessing loud aircraft noise (IEC 537).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-weighting

Sounds complicated! Any specific recommendations? Here are some opinions.

  • My recommendation is Hearos High Fidelity Earplugs. They're great for chopping the volume (<=20dB rating) while retaining the sound balance. I've used 'em in several rock & roll gigs, finding it amazing to hear new sounds that I hadn't previously noticed. . . . Oh, and they're $13 US, so not too hellish to replace.


  • I bought a pair of relatively cheap ($35) Panasonic noise-canceling headphones. They don't do much good in an open office but they're wonderful in a data center with its steady noise. Don't even need to have them plugged into a music source, just turn on the cancellation circuit (2xAAA power lasts all night) and the fan noise drops into the background. Even without music that's a great stress reducer.

    My Panasonics have a muff style but they still sit on the ear. There are some newer earbud-style noise-canceling sets. And the fancy Bose (and others) completely enclose the ear. What to choose? Anything that completely encloses the ear will be more efficient and effective than a design that fits on or in the ear, because the muffling will passively eliminate a big part of the sound. And it keeps your ears warmer too :-)


  • From the data I've seen this isn't the case. At the high-end, the Bose Quiet Comfort (retail $299) only blocks between 17db and 30db, varying by frequency. Low-end "active" noise cancelling headphones do much more poorly. On the other hand, the low-end Shure E2c ($99) in-ear headphone blocks 20db-44db, also varying by frequency.

    My review of specs for the active vs. in-ear headphones was similar among the low-hanging fruit as well, which is why I went with in-ear blocking headphones vs. active noise re-duction.

    Of course, some folks don't like stuff being put in their ears—I had to deal with a lot of that when I was making them. So, YMMV.

    If I were going for higher-end in-ear headphones in a price-range similar to the Bose, I'd be choosing Shure or Etymotic Research. Though, at those prices, you'd might as well bite the bullet and cough up another bill or two and buy musician's monitors.


  • I'd like to add to the chorus of endorsements for noise-cancelling headphones! A few years ago, I used to spend very, very long hours in a large datacenter. The constant noise was really getting to me. I bought a pair of Sony MDR-NC20s (discontinued, now MDR-NC50) and they made life in the datacenter MUCH nicer.

    I agree that over-the-ear not only does a better job of sealing off noise, but keeps your ears warmer as well. I find that my ears need to adjust to new headphones. Wearing them for long periods of time will hurt initially, but that goes away.


  • I have a pair of custom molded "Noise Brakers". They have a little valve in them that lets the pressure equalise and makes it possible to hold a conversation (although not as transparent as noise reducing headphones, you're right that the latter are useless in a DC).

    I got them at Sears (in Canada) in the hearing aid department, but this was many years ago. I don't know if Sears still does this (in Canada or the US), but you might try suppliers of hearing aids or industrial ear protection.

    They're not quite as effective as full ear muffs, but they are very good. They're also translucent and relatively unobtrusive—e.g., if you want to sleep through a meeting... (:-)

    Also—remember to relax as much as possible when they're taking the mold, which involves pouring a compound called "Audilin" (I think) into your ear. I had to have one ear redone because of fit, mostly because I had clenched my jaw too much when the mold was made. It's not at all painful, just strange to have cold wet molding compound in your ear...


  • WRT the Audilin plugs: You can get the low-end version of these made for about $50 at any gun show. They are made of a catalyst/silicon mixture and set up in about 10-15 minutes (and you're supposed to wiggle your jaw and swallow while the silicon is setting ;-).

    They are quite good if you get them without strings for putting under your motorcycle helmet. You can also go with more high-end versions. Some are very similar to the active noise-cancelling ear muffs, only an in-ear version. They can also be built to act as "monitors" for radios and other communication systems, or with just your normal 3.5mm stereo plug with headphones.

    Of late, I've been using silicon-flanged in-ear headphones with my iPod (Apple, Sony, Shure, various brands—I have Sony's and Apple's) pretty much all the time. I ride public transit out here on the right coast, and these help keep me from going bonkers from the noise/ people (hazards of being an introvert). They also are quite useful in the datacenter, since companies seem ignore the OSHA requirements for ear protection in enviro's above 80-85db. I guess they get away with it because we are (usually) only in there for short periods of time.


  • I strongly recommend noise cancellation headphones for a noisy datacenter—it greatly reduced my noise/stress level from days of datacenter work.

    I even rigged 'em up to work with my cell phone—cell phone mini-jack to "normal" minijack to splitter (microphone/mono speaker)—plugged in a noise cancellation mike and my noise cancellation headphones and had actually conversations from a noisy datacenter. The headphones actually help keep you warm too.

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What's the basic personal toolkit?

Drill

  • I've got a nice Black & Decker 18V that I like to use.... I haven't been able to find many cordless drills that have a higher capacity battery, or a larger diameter chuck throat (to take larger diameter bits).

Cordless Screwdriver

  • My favorite pick is the Dewalt cordless screwdriver is the king of power tools for the sysadmin's tool chest, IMHO:

    It's high-quality, well-balanced, powerful, has an adjustable clutch with a great range, and comes with two batteries and a quick charger. I find it to be much better than everything else I've used for sysadmin work, from the cheaper cordless screwdrivers (where we tended to kill one about every six months) to cordless drills (which just tend to be too darn heavy and awkward for the most common tasks I end up working on). It's the best $99 I've ever spent on a tool. Seriously.

Barcode Scanner

  • My favorite thing for inventory is my HandSpring with the Symbol CSM150 barcode scanning module. It's small enough to carry anywhere, and it reads barcodes from greater distances and under worse lighting than the big Property Services scanner (which I also use regularly). I got software to sync the data to my Mac from Stevens Creek.

    Since almost all the major vendors are barcoding their serial numbers now, it makes getting information off machines much easier, and eliminates data entry errors from my terrible typing and worse handwriting.

Canned Air

  • Nothing worse than opening up some server or working with a pile of cables covered in nasty dust and filth. It's a basic step one for keyboard cleaning, too.

Digital Camera

  • a small digital camera, for serial numbers and etc

  • IMO, my Sony Clié NX70V is best. With a rotatable camera and a very slim profile, I can put it under or behind things with very little clearance. Damn handy to use to look under a heavy couch when you've dropped something under it and you can't get your face down close enough to the floor. Same is true for many other applications.

Finger-Nail Polish

  • Add a bottle of finger-nail polish.

    Huh?

    Yes, to thwart the users who—"I didn't open the box"—when you *KNOW* that that is not the NIC that was in the system originally.

    (Yea, I'm a guy and I carry nail-polish. So sue me.)

    Put it on strategic screw heads, and in one hidden place. I actually had a user try to replace *MY* nail polish dab with her own after she tried to "save" me time by moving her own hard drive from one system to another. The hidden dab, when pointed out to her that it did not match the color on the screw heads, got her manager to stomp harder. Both of their faces where almost the color of the nail polish. :)

Listening Device

  • I have a special screwdriver ( Snap-On 12" T-15—think old Macintosh integral chassis), which is not used as a screwdriver. It so perfectly fits my ear that I can tell, audibly, what a misbehaving hard drive is or is not doing by pressing the tip against the drive and the handle in my ear. You think it funny? Try it.

    This is a classic (auto) mechanic's trick. My brother-in-law is a mechanic and he taught me to do this with a regular screwdriver. Also useful is a little rubber tubing that conducts the sound... and a little easier to snake around weird shaped chassis components.

    What you should expect to hear from a good drive, and what possible different things would youhear from a bad drive?

    Weird variations in the sound are bad. You expect to hear some changes as the heads seek back and forth, but there is an underlying whir of the spindle motor that shouldn't change.

    You'll probably hear the bad sounds (clicks, clunks, etc.) without any implements, but the tubing (or screwdriver) helps you isolate exactly which drive the bad sounds are coming from.

  • Put a piece of metal on the thing to be heard (a screwdriver tip against a disk, for example). Put the handle of the screwdriver against the bone in front of your ear (upper jaw by the ear). It conducts the "sound" not through the air, but through the screwdriver. So you "hear" what it's touching. Try it against any machine in front of you now. Really handy when you have 4 disks and suspect one of not spinning up. You'll never "hear" disk 2, but you can by connecting it to your ear, basically. Handy with laptop disks.

Utility Step Ladder

  • A two-step folding utility step ladder (staircase type, not wooden step ladder type) is super useful, when all you see around you are wheeled office chairs. Many network cabinets are about 7 feet high. And if you are trying to unweave cables from a cable tray or ladder above you, that little boost of height can make all the difference.

Soldering Pencil

  • Battery powered soldering pencil; allows me to tack things down inside a running machine.

Modular Adapters

  • I really like the modular adapters which use cat-5 as the cable between the two ends. This means you have to carry a lot fewer cable ends in order to convert between the various data types, and if you need a longer cable it should just be a matter of getting a longer cat-5 cable.

Lists

Here are list of essentials suggested by our correspondents:

  • Fleece jacket for when you're in the cold server room for hours fixing a server.
  • IBM 3151/3153 dumb terminal on a cart. Easier to use than a laptop + emulation software.

  • I'll second this one. It doesn't fit in my bag, but we have several floating around our data center.
  • razor knife
  • electrician snips
    • The electrician snips aren't the same as dykes. These look like a very strong pair of kids scissors, with points, that also have a pair of notches for stripping wire. The only place I've ever seen them is GrayBar or Frys (and the ones at Frys are cheap in my opinion). One of the companies that makes impact tools has a newer design out now that has more comfortable handles, these will kill your hands if you're using them quite a bit. However, they will easily cut a cat 5 cable or just about anything else you use them on. (just found them at twacomm.com)
    • Klein makes a pair as well (I don't have a direct URL, as their online catalog is driven by stuff like "Javascript:CatLnk('Knives%20&%20Scissors');"). If you bring up their online catalog, and choose "Product Index" and then "Knives and Scissors", you'll get to their page. You can find their stuff in Home Depot and Loewe's, also.
  • jewelers screwdrives
  • allen wrenches (metric and english)
  • leatherman w/hex adapter
  • assortment of hex bits and nut drivers for the above
  • serial cable adapters to plug just about anything into just about anything else
  • various small pliers and cutters (set from RatShack, I think)
  • small butane soldering iron (I still end up tinning cables from time to time) I really don't like the older style of soldering iron—much too easy to injure yourself. I much prefer the ColdHeat or ColdHeat Pro style.
  • a *good* multiscrewdriver (e.g. Picquic)
  • a #2 Phillips driver, a couple of flat drivers
  • a crescent wrench
  • a pair of pliers
  • an inexpensive volt-ohm-meter
  • possibly a tone generator and inductive receiver (for tracing cables) are (could be shared tools as well)
  • a simple "neon tester"
  • handy for quickly identifying if an outlet has power
  • smaller to carry around than a voltmeter

The kinds of tools you should recommend does depend on your organisation as well. At a large company, the range of what you do is often much smaller than in a small company. I would expect to be using the full range of my mechanical skills in a small company, but when you have tens of thousands of people working with you, the sysadmins do much less mechanical work, hence the need for a small range of tools.


  • box cutter
  • two RJ45 cables straight, one crossed all about 2m.
  • a small hub (four port, 10/100)
  • cisco console cable
  • serial null modem cable
  • some Linux rescue and install CDs (e.g. Knoppix, http://www.knopper.net)
  • one USB memory stick with some windows tools (putty, teraterm, ...) and my ssh and gpg keys. I like to keep them separate from the computer.
  • some pcmcia networking cards (Ethernet, TokenRing, wlan)
  • some empty CD-RWs and floppy disks
  • cable ties and tape
  • one towel
  • one or two books
  • some Aspirin
  • my Laptop with
  • lots of documentation
  • tools like nmap, ethereal, perl, ...
  • some mp3s

All this (except for the Leatherman and the USB Stick) packed into a nice Targus Laptop backpack.


I'm glad to see that silly-putty and/or blue-tack is in others toolkits as well.

The other things that I have found are just way too useful to be without are also things that people find absolutely strange.

I have a couple of pair of 6 and 8 inch forceps. They have a 1.5inch long jaws about 1/8 inch wide. Really great for picking things up, holding them, etc. The jaws are also small, yet strong enough to straighten the pins inside an RS-232 or older SCSI connector.

A small magnet on an extendable shaft for getting that wild screw. A small flashlight of the same type when you need a light in an odd place.

Next, a small package of blue-tack. That stuff you use to put up posters, etc. Put a small piece on a dental probe and you can pick up that screw you dropped. Another piece on the screwdriver and you can get that screw back in the hole.

A good set of interchangable bits (torx, allen, phillips, etc). A screwdriver style handle and a wrench style handle for them.

A selection of cables and cable ends and adapters. db-9 to cat5 db-25, etc. USB-serial.


  • T-10 Torx screwdriver
  • Philips and flat-blade screwdrivers in various sizes
  • DB-9/RJ-45 adapter
  • DB-25/RJ-45 adapter
  • DB-9 cable (both ends)
  • DB-25 cable (both ends)
  • DB-9 gender adapter
  • DB-25 gender adapter
  • DB-9-to-DB-25 cable
  • USB-to-DB9 adapter. Used for consoling a system that has really odd problems (Usually the console server is sufficient, but sometimes not.)
  • Spare Cat5e Ethernet cable
  • Spare Cat5e crossover Ethernet cable
  • Used to work on certain systems such as disk arrays with a network front-end, to set (or reset) their IPs, like we did just the other day
  • Spare RJ-11 telephone cable. Not used much these days, but sometimes I'm on the road and only have a PSTN connection, and need to dial into the office
  • *Good* ratcheting crimper like the Ideal for RJ-45
  • Bag of RJ-45 ends
  • Little cable stripper tool. I run network cables all the time
  • Bag of 10-32 clip-nuts
  • Bag of 10-32 screws. This is for racking the systems, which we regularly do
  • Several OS CDROMs that can be used to boot or do installs. Sometimes I can't Jumpstart/NIM/whatever a system due to ACLs, and sometimes it's just faster to physically throw a CD in a local on-site system to debug a problem. Did that just the other day for a large server.
  • Laptop with a CD or DVD burner, and wireless + ethernet + modem
  • Extra laptop battery
  • Laptop AC adapter. Serves as a crash cart for local on-site work, and for remote access when away from the office
  • Spare 110V 15A AC U.S. power cord (NEMA 5P-15)
  • 5+ spare CD-R blanks (or DVD-R blanks)
  • Sharpie felt-tip ink pen. Sometimes I need to do an emergency download + burn of a CD to resolve an issue... we did this with Solaris just the other day
  • Post-It sticky notes
  • A small spool of tape (for impromptu labelling). I've got to label cables before removing them for opening up a system chassis (e.g. to install cards)
  • Simple 110V AC @ 15A voltmeter/ammeter like the Kill-A-Watt. We use them at various facilities all the time to help us better gauge sizing for planning new hardware turnups at various sites. We did that for our NYC facility just a short time ago.

I very rarely need to open up our servers. When I do, it's usually to replace a disk adapter's cache battery, or to add a card. Sheer majority of these tools are to connect to/interface with systems or get them installed+wired up, do initial troubleshooting before opening hardware service calls with the vendor, and not to open them up per se.

A few items, I rarely have need for—extra AC power cord, RJ-11 phone cable, raw DB-9 or DB-25 unwired adapters. But pretty much use everything else very regularly.

 

What's the basic toolkit at a site level?

The most popular tools—and the ones that often tries to walk away on their own (*cough*):

  • If no multi-tool, then two pliers: one needlenose and one not
  • T-10 Torx screwdriver
  • Philips and flat-blade screwdrivers in various sizes
  • DB-9/RJ-45 adapter
  • DB-25/RJ-45 adapter
  • DB-9 cable (both ends)
  • DB-25 cable (both ends)
  • DB-9 gender adapter
  • DB-25 gender adapter
  • DB-9-to-DB-25 cable
  • Spare Cat5e Ethernet cable
  • Spare Cat5e crossover Ethernet cable
  • Spare RJ-11 telephone cable
  • USB-to-DB9 adapter
  • *Good* ratcheting crimper like the Ideal for RJ-45
  • Bag of 10-32 clip-nuts
  • Bag of 10-32 screws
  • Bag of RJ-45 ends
  • Little cable stripper tool
  • Several OS CDROMs that can be used to boot or do installs
  • Laptop with a CD or DVD burner, and wireless + ethernet + modem
  • Extra laptop battery
  • Spare 110V 15A AC U.S. power cord (NEMA 5P-15)
  • Laptop AC adapter
  • 5+ spare CD-R blanks (or DVD-R blanks)
  • Sharpie felt-tip ink pen
  • Post-It sticky notes
  • A small spool of tape (for impromptu labelling)
  • Simple 110V AC @ 15A voltmeter/ammeter like the Kill-A-Watt

That's what I tend to have in my laptop bag, and can resolve pretty much anything given that, except for the more estoteric problems.

The stuff above should run about USD $300, not including the laptop. One can share utility tool and crimper, but they often seem to walk away.

A label printer + AC adapter is often handy, too. But this can usually be kept on-site and shared.

  • Comment: No, because you can never find it when you need it, and labelling is so essential that this needs to be something people have *no* difficulty laying their hands on. Also, giving people their own labeller inspires them to take ownership of the labelling problem.
  • Reply: We solved that problem by chaining it (with a long chain) to a padlock. :-) So now it is accessible to all, but cannot be removed from the site—therefore, we don't run the risk of it being unavailable at a bad time.

    I did, however, buy my own USD $30 portable label printer for my laptop bag, and most of the tools in my bag. So now I don't really care if not-my-stuff walks off—let it be a lesson about diligence in securing items, while it not impeding my work.

    I've also noticed that some people use 15mm labels; they need to be at least 30mm (or even larger) to be reasonably visible from a distance. Becomes more important in a reasonably large computer room for locating offending hardware when scanning rows and racks.

    Labels also don't seem to be all of equal quality—some labels' adhesive will peel off quickly when exposed to nearby vented hot air from the system chassis, and some will last forever.

There are others: pager, cell/mobile phone, Blackberry, spare batteries, etc. A digital camera (or in a pinch, a mobile phone with a built-in camera, though the resolution is usually crappy) is sometimes handy, for troubleshooting problems or showing to management specific layout issues, or for documenting rack layout for colleagues at other sites.

If you exclude the utility tool and crimper + screws + nuts + RJ-45 ends + laptop + "misc others" stuff, what's left is perhaps around USD $50-60, give or take a bit.

It's probably ok to keep utility tool + crimper + Kill-A-Watt related stuff on-site, perhaps in a padlocked toolbox or closet, as a compromise between accessibility and expense (and is also a reasonable anti-theft action).

I would definitely make sure there's at least two or three sets of screwdrivers so that multiple people can do things like racking a system easily. They're cheap enough, anyway; can get a nice Sears Craftsman or Black & Decker set for anywhere between USD $10 to $80.

Occasionally, raw DB-9 or DB-25 adapters, not wired, is useful for making custom adapters with a particular pinout... but I don't really find the need to do that very often at all, so it's not in my bag. On-site, though.

In a big hurry, my bare bones laptop bag list would have:

  • Leatherman Wave or Gerber utility multi-tool
  • T-10 Torx screwdriver
  • Philips and flat-blade screwdrivers in a few common sizes
  • DB-9/RJ-45 adapter
  • DB-9 cable (both ends)
  • Spare Cat5e Ethernet cable
  • Spare Cat5e crossover Ethernet cable
  • USB-to-DB9 adapter (if laptop doesn't have a DB9 serial port)
  • Several OS CDROMs that can be used to boot or do installs
  • Laptop with a CD or DVD burner, and wireless + ethernet + modem
  • Laptop AC adapter

The above list is about as good as I've seen. I go heavy on non-metallic flashlights, cordless soldering pencil, chop sticks (yes, chop sticks—they are non-metallic and can reach into the smallest places to retreive dust bunnies, screws, hair, paper tags, etc.), telephone/network toner, A/C toner, linesmens' headset (bed of nails & RJ connectors), static grounding straps (wrist, box and mat), dust mask (I have asthma), camel hair paint brush, and my trusty Think Geek "STFU" coffee cup.

 

Cable Management

To tie-wrap or to velcro? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the lacerations and honorable scars of improperly-cut tie-wraps, or to take velcro amidst a snake's-nest of cables, and by the spoolful, wrap them.

The reality of system administration is that there are two kinds of installations in most data centers or wire closets:

  1. the temporary installation that becomes permanent
  2. the permanent installation that turns out to be temporary

Both kinds can be managed with either tie-wrap or velcro, and only you can guess whether the cables you are managing are going to turn out to be of type 1 or type 2. The flexibility and ease of rework that comes with velcro also comes with a price —unless you've been doing cable management for a long, long time, your bundles don't come out as tight and tidy as the tie-wrapped bundles.

That said, there are some tips for managing a tie-wrap installation without becoming an inadvertant blood donor.

  • If you do get one of these make sure you spring for flush cutters, not diagonal cutters. Dykes won't do it either. Anything other than a flush cutter will leave a *really* sharp little bit of plastic on the end of the tie wrap, and they love to draw blood when you run your hand over them.
  • Here is a handy, blood sparing tip: take a pair of cheap dikes, dull the edges ever-so-slightly, use these to cut off the ends of nylon tie straps. The feathery edges that are left will not lacerate your hands like the razor sharp "clean" ends of tie straps cut off with a normal dike every time you have to dive into your cable bundles.
  • Better yet, ditch the tie wraps all together. As I go through redoing a bunch of my wiring I have been replacing all tie wraps with velcro straps. They are reusable, you don't have to cut them to put new cables into a bundle (i never get a warp and fuzzy feeling when i have to cut zip ties of of cables connected to production systems), and they are not as easy to overtighten and damage cables. I recently bought a roll of this stuff from grainger for under $15 and i've made about 50 bundles with it so far. This stuff is a blessing, especially if you do lots of moves/add/changes.
  • Velcro—yes it's great stuff, however, ever tried to thread pre-made bundles through conduit or even a tight ladder when you made the bundles with Velcro? That's where I use tie straps.
  • Panduit makes some stuff called "Tak Tape" that is perfect for this. It is basically the same as velcro, but with almost invisible hooks and loops. It looks like electrical tape when it is wrapped around a bundle of wires. The only drawback is that you can only use it on larger bundles, the roll I have behind me says no smaller than 5/8".
  • A decent flashlight, preferably LED for close-up area work. For everything else, there's a sledgehammer, sawz-all and a 12 gauge.
  • I would add a serial cable kit, mine consists of a DB25 cable with an assortment of adaptors to connect just about anything to just about anything else, including a serial break-out box. It's a life saver when you need to connect a random terminal or laptop to a random network device.
  • I carry one 2m cable, and a 6 inch crossover plus a coupler. Saves a lot of space.
  • Belkin 7ft/2m network cable kit
  • Includes ISDN coupler that will work with network cables, plus RJ-45 -> RJ-11 adapters to connect to analog phone lines.
  • Retracts into small case like a tape measure; adapters attach to casefor storage.
  • "Best little gadget I've bought in a while."
  • Everyone should also carry Silly Putty[tm]. Yep, that's what I said. Non-conductive, no greasy spots, and it picks up the *tiniest* thing that you just dropped into the machine you are working on, and that is currently (augghhh!!!) running, and up, and needs to survive, and what you dropped is metal, and bad, and...
  • I am suprised that no one has mentioned a tie wrap gun. This tool automatically tightens and cuts tie wraps flush with head in one operation. They normally have a tension adjustment so you can cinch a tie wrap sung to very tight. If you are dressing the cables in a rack, this tool is the best way to trim the ends off the tie wraps. They range in price and niceness from cheap to expensive. Try it, you'll like it.
  • Most people I know are never using tie wraps, at least not for cables in a rack. Cables change all the time. Velcro is the way to go.

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One-Offs

What are some more unusual tools that folks find useful?

  • USB keychain drive—"It becomes more useful the more I use it. Firewall rulesets, sendmail config files, stuff from ~, PuTTY, WinSCP2, various other windows apps, current OpenSSH tarball, a song or two I like, some photos, my GPG keyrings and revcert, bookmarks.html for Mozilla ..." Scott Francis
  • 4-port 10/100 Mbps hub (not switch)—"Netgear DS104 ... Useful for port sniffing."
  • Fibre Swiper
  • Klein combo cable-splicing knife and electrician's scissors
  • Flatbed scanner—for scanning "everything from packing lists for equipment, to business cards, to licenses for every single piece of software (I scan the back of the CD case; much easier than typing it in)."
  • Digital camera—LCD screens make it much easier to do screenshots this way
  • Cage nut tool—one person particuarly recommended the Dell racks version
  • Cable tracer—"Nothing's worse than a last second firefighting call to a new client who's got 2 6509s completely filled with spaghetti."

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Toolbags

Now that I have all this, where do I put it?

A number of folks modified or re-purposed laptop bags to hold their toolkits, especially the type with multiple zippered pockets that can hold tool subsets such as ratchet kits, labelmakers, cables & adaptors, etc.

Other favorites included smaller bags such as:

  • Husky Tool bag
  • Rubbermaid 7187 toolbag
  • GI canvas tool bag

Any tips on managing small parts?

Keep a stash of small empty containers in your toolbag. Film canisters, pill bottles, mint tins, etc. Use them to hold all the small parts from multiple disassembling jobs, putting a temporary label on the container.

Also include a catch-all for homeless small parts, which can save the day when someone loses the mounting kit that goes with a drive, or drops one of the 2 tiny retaining screws from a laptop drive. A divided plastic box-tray, such as are sold for fishing lures or toolbox tops, is even better. Just make sure the divisions go up to the lid, or your parts will be intermingled the first time you drop the box on the floor.