Data Centre Cabling Best Practice
Data centres have become a key part of nearly every business. Equally as companies have come to rely on technology and cabling technology more than ever before. They serve as a highly efficient way of scaling up the storage, processing, and data distribution capabilities of a company, and are in a constant state of flux as new technology is developed.
Whether they know it or not, every company is in the data centre business, because their companies are now dependent upon this infrastructure. The design of these centres has continued to evolve, and decision-makers are finally learning to avoid skimping and are instead making long-term investments in their data centres.
One example of a way that data centres are changing is the use of cabling. By using appropriate cabling, data centres can harness efficiencies that will reduce costs. As one might guess, data centres are not cheap to operate, lease, or manage, and this only creates a stronger need for solutions that mitigate costs.
Key points with reference to Data Centre Cabling Technology:
- Stay Up To Date. The way we use cabling changes rapidly. A logical cabling plan used to be the standard. However the industry is now moving away from that model to a new one. Between cooling, power, security risks, costs, and managing physical space, there is more than enough for companies to do to increase the efficiency of their cable use. With all these different considerations, companies would do well to up their investment in data centre cabling.
- Future-Proof the Technology. Similar to making sure you are up to date with any and all changes within the industry. You want to make sure that your technology has been set up so it will work with any future developments. This means that if you were to upgrade other parts of your data centre infrastructure, your technology would not be obsolete to the point of failure.
- Understand the Trends. Nothing ever stays the same for long. This applies twice as much to technology like this. We are seeing the nature of data centres change very quickly. Furthermore as virtualization and modularization take hold, you can expect your company to need much more cabling in the near future.
- Don’t Overlook Its Importance. Your company has to have an efficient network infrastructure that is capable of handling all your needs. Chiefly those of your employees and customers. In addition you need to have a system that is robust enough to cope with your scaling company. Most companies don’t even realize that data centre cabling can be a chokepoint for all of their technology. In short if they realised this they would invest more in it.
Data Center Tiers
- Tier One – Basic installation and capacity with a requirement for a UPS as a minimum
- Tier Two – Rediundant Cooiling and Power is added to add a redundant capacity
- Tier Three – A design where any component of the data centre can fall out of service and production isn’t affected at all
- Tier Four – Where every production capacity is protected from any form of failure
They can also be described as
- Class One – Single operational solution
- Class Two – Single operational solution with a solution of redundancy
- Class Three – Multiple operational solutions to provide a concurrent operation and maintenance solution
- Class Four – Fault tolerant solution where there are multiple operational solutions
Data Centre Development
Learning how to differentiate between wasteful expenses and long-term investments is what sets companies apart, and as the dependency on data centres continues, we are going to see how important the investment in cabling truly is.
With the massive trend of moving from centralised servers to more modular format, cabling is more necessary than ever. Data centres have always developed in a cyclical manner, and this will likely continue for a long time to come. Knowing that, firms would do well to think long-term and build themselves data centre solutions with cabling implementations that remain current.
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About NM Cabling Solutions – Network Cabling Specialist
NM Cabling is a technology and structured cabling integrator working throughout the United Kingdom.
We have created a comprehensive Knowledge Centre for our industry which can be viewed at https://www.nmcabling.co.uk/knowledge-centre/