This will be my 4th time posting this. My posts keep getting AutoRemoved for having an Referral/Affiliate link, but there are none of these -- the 3rd attempt had NO links. So let's try again.

So it's that time of year again. I'm planning on trying to clean up the cabling in my homelab. I feel like this time I should be successful as I'm not going to remove everything and re-rack everything. This time, while I will be doing some moving, but just swapping the position of 2 of my servers, adding another, and changing where the PiRack is located.

Currently, my lab is, from top to bottom:

1. 24 port Cat6a Patch Panel
2. Cable Management Tray
3. Mikrotik
4. Keyboard / Monitor / Mouse
5. Supermicro 1U half-length server, running PFSense
6. 2U Drawer (holds spare parts, transceivers, cables, tools, etc)
7. Temperature Controlled Fan
8. 3x Raspberry Pi 4b housed in a UCTronics Pi Rack
9. Cisco UCS c220 M5SX (Dual 6240 CPU, 256GB Ram) - ESXi 8
10. Dell r640 (Dual 6230, 128GB Ram) - ESX 9 (Once I rack the second r640, going to use this as a VCF test cluster)
11. Cisco UCS c240 M5SX (Dual 6240 CPU, 256GB Ram)
12. Cisco UCS c240 M5SX (Dual 6240 CPU, 256GB Ram)
13. Cisco UCS c240 M5SX (Dual 6240 CPU, 256GB Ram)
14. Supermicro CSE-836 (Single E5-2690 v4, 256GB Ram, 8x 10TB HDD, 8x 16TB HDD, 2x Intel Optane P1600X used for SLOG, 2x PM9A3 960GB) - ESXi 8, with a TrueNAS VM that has the HBA and all NVMe drives passed through)
15. UPS

After the cleanup, my lab will consists of:

• 1x Cisco UCS c220 M5SX (1u)
• 3x Cisco UCS c240 M5SX (2u)
• 2x Dell r640 (1u)
• 1x Supermicro CSE-836 (3u)
• 1x Supermicro 1u half-length (Used as Firewall/router)
• 1x Arista 7050q 16 port QSFP+ 40g switch, mounted in the rear
• 1x Mikrotik CRS328-24P-4S+RM (1u, used for management/IPMI/PoE) - Front Mounted
• 1x Avocent 16 port KVM
• 3x Raspberry Pi 4B housed in a 1u PiRack

Each of my servers will have:

• 1 (or 2) QSFP+ 40g DAC (Probably going to run a second since I plan on getting a second Arista 7050q switch for redundancy)
• 3x Cat6 Cables (1/Management, 1/CIMC/IPMI/iDRAC, 1/KVM (Each server has a VGA/USB dongle that connects via Cat6 to my Avocent KVM)
• 2x Power (this is just for the future, when we move I plan on having 2 dedicated circuits for my homelab, and each UPS will connect to 1 circuit)

I also have Cable Management Arms for the Cisco Servers servers, though I'm not sure if I will keep them).

I'm thinking about creating cable bundles that each include the DACs, Cat6, and a second bundle for power for each server. I'm thinking about using something like the PET Expandable Braided Cable Sleeve to make the cable bundles, or possible just use some Velcro cable ties to make the bundles.

I'm using a Tripp Lite SRQ24U Cabinet, which really doesn't have any built in vertical cable management. There is space next to the fans and the door where you can run cables, and having the cables bundled together for each server will make routing cables and keeping neat easier.

I would show photos of the rear of my cabinet, but I am truly ashamed of the mess it's become. I do plan to film the cleanup and post before/after photos.

Any tips? Suggestions on things I should look at / purchase? I gotta make my Christmas list so time for me to get busy.

FYI, the first image is my current homelab state, second image is what the rear of the cabinet looks like, and 3rd is what I'm thinking about using.