The Invisible Wires

Follow the Norm
As all businesses transform using IT, it has led to a proliferation of cabling in data and IT centers, and even purpose-built modern office buildings. It's no longer sufficient to wire basic cabling and mains around a data center site, there is now a need for all manner of cabling, raised floor pathways, overhead trays and plenum spaces, as well as feeds for wireless communications.

Active Cables To Ease Data Center Crunch

A new copper interconnect for data center systems developed by Quellan Inc. and WL Gore & Associates, that the duo claims will significantly reduce power, size and latency while extending reach. The so-called Active Cables extend the reach of 10 Gbit/second CX4-type cables from less than ten to about 35 meters while dramatically reducing size and power consumption.

The Quellan/Gore approach uses a new low-loss dielectric material in the cables from Gore combined with a signal conditioning chip from Quellan embedded in the receiving connector. The resulting cables use one-fifth the power of standard CX4 cables and reduce the interconnect latency of the cable itself to 300 picoseconds. They are also about a third of the size and weight of CX4 cables, easing the problem of airflow in data center systems.

The new cables can help users pack more computers into smaller clusters in the data center while improving critical power and thermal dynamics.

In April 2005, the Telecommunications Industry Association published TIA-942, "Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers," that defines a number of guidelines for planning and building data centers. The standard, which deals with copper and fibre optic media, states that both horizontal and vertical cables should be run, accommodating growth so that these areas do not have to be revisited.

"We have to consider heating issues, cable management and the installation aspects while designing a data center. EIA/TIA has come out with a new standard, TIA-942 covering all new aspects for a data center design," says Kumar.

The TIA-942 specification references private and public domain data center requirements for applications and procedures such as network architecture, electrical design, file storage, backup and archiving, database management, web and application hosting and power management. Data centers can be classified by Tiers, with Tier 1 being the most basic and inexpensive, and Tier 4 being the most robust and costly.

According to the standard, a tier-1 data center is not required to have redundant power and cooling infrastructures. It needs only a lock for security and can tolerate up to 28.8 hours of downtime per year. In contrast, a tier-4 data center must have redundant systems for power and cooling, with multiple distribution paths that are active and fault tolerant. Furthermore, the cabling infrastructure should have a redundant backbone, and the facility can permit no more than 0.4 hours of downtime per year.

Tier 1 or 2 is usually sufficient for enterprise data centers that primarily serve users within a corporation. Financial data centers are typically tier-3 or 4 because they are critical to economic stability and therefore, must meet higher standards set by federal regulatory bodies. Public data centers that provide disaster recovery/backup services are also built to higher standards.

A company should perform a business impact analysis before selecting the appropriate structured cabling technology for its premises

Bandwidth Conscious
As networks expand and bandwidth demands increase, the data center infrastructure must be able to maintain constant reliability and performance. The cabling itself should support current bandwidth needs while enabling anticipated migration to higher network speeds without sacrificing performance.

"In fact, the data center infrastructure should be designed and implemented to outlast the applications and equipment it supports by at least 10 to 15 years," asserts Kumar. This is apart from the considerations on higher data transmissions requirements of 10 Gigabit and more and higher levels of reliability. Tier-4 reliability offers 99.995% availability which translates to 0.4 hrs of annual down time.

As per a recent CommScope global survey on enterprise network trends, changes in the way organizations operate are generating a demand for bandwidth hungry applications, forcing data flow through the organization to be quicker and more efficient.

Dr Tan says, "A number of factors, including bandwidth-hungry applications, businesses' demand for increased network uptime, and the need for efficient network management and monitoring, are driving the selection of cabling infrastructures and the requisite investment for higher performance systems, rather than initial cost."

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