Reminds me of the first data center where i had to do the cabling for myself. Previously i thought my job starts when the electrician has finished his but there i had to do it all by myself.

Mounting systems into the rack is not really a challenge when you can operate a screwdriver and the first p570 went in without a hitch. But then came the cabling: power, network, FC-adapter, ... to make a long (and rather unnerving) story short i ended up with something looking halfways between a late Jackson Pollock and an oversized cup of Spaghetti.

Noticing my preposition one IBM service technician (Sebastian: whereever you are i cannot express how thankful i am for the lessons learned from you) then took me aside, we removed all the cabling again and he showed me how it is done: think a tree, you build logical groups (small bundles, held together with velcro ribbon), then build groups of groups (bigger bundles with additional velcro) and so on. You always have the cables run from the middle to the sides at the same height at every level, so that you can see (and reach) behind where the connectors are.You make the cables as short as possible but never by compromising the "run" of them (cables going diagonally or "across" something are an absolute no-no). It was one of the things which are simple once you know them but if nobody shows them to you you are bound to make them wrong first.

After a few hours of recabling while he serviced another system i showed my efforts (which now looked much closer to what you referenced as beautiful then before) to him, he nodded, corrected some minor things and i had cabled my first rack. Heeding his advice and applying it to the double floor i even managed to get along with that.

Since then i have seen a lot of systems where the person doing the cabling never got this most valuable bit of advice. Sadly enough i even worked for a data center where i sacrificed a weekend to shut down a system, recable it and started it over. When i came back one year later it looked exactly the same like the first time i saw it. I didn't do it again because i know a hopeless cause when i see it.

In German we have a name for free-flying cables (usually network cables), which are often not even long enough to run across the floor: "Wäscheleine" (washing line or clothesline), because like these, they tend to span across the room. This is perhaps the worst thing one can produce in a data center and i have seen them (and cursed their originators) countless times.

bakunin