cabling, Enclosures,
Cabinets & Racks
connections, ports, power
and cooling. To accommodate
demand, today’s data centres
need to increase agility, offer
higher levels of service, reduce
complexity and cut costs. Vital
considerations in planning and
decision making include density,
data rates, design and cost.
The need to invest to improve
networking performance has
grown drastically. Research by
DCD showed that in 2015 58.6 per
cent of data centre owners and
operators were concerned about
inadequate networks.
As a result of the changes
described, we’ve been seeing an
increase of East-West traffic, as
opposed to North-South traffic.
Increasing data rates and port
numbers in environments with
rigidly defined sizes require
significantly increased density.
Data centres want greater freedom
to choose between End of Row
(EoR), Middle of Row (MoR)
and Top of Rack (ToR) to bring
design flexibility, performance
optimisation and, in many
cases, considerable cost savings.
Server energy efficiency levels
are generally poor and there’s
significant pressure on data centre
owners and operators to become
more efficient. That’s an important
driver for server virtualisation,
which requires low latency.
Meeting
bandwidth demand
While 10G data centres might
currently be the norm, demand
for increased bandwidth
is one of the top pressures
operators are facing. In fact, data
centre bandwidth is becoming a
bottleneck, slowing the progression
of the Internet of Things.
To ensure the longevity of a
data centre, operators need cabling
that will be able to support the
next generation of equipment.
The current 10G networks and
32 | April 2017
structured cabling will do for
now, but the data centre needs
to be able to make the move
to 25G, 40G, 50G or even 100G
bandwidths. In order to do that,
operators need a migration path
that reuses and reconfigures part
of the installation to save costs and
prevent downtime.
Having a clear migration path
simplifies installation and upgrade,
lengthens the usable lifespan of
the facility and reduces the total
cost of ownership.
When space is
at a premium
Since data centres now need to
change rapidly, careful use of
space is essential. The less space
taken up by cabling the better.
For t