Data Centre Cabling and Management
Why should you to accept anything less than a top-notch data centre?
Achieving a high-performance network infrastructure is well within your reach. It's essential, though, to dedicate time to carefully plan your approach. Additionally, investing in premium cabling and implementing an effective cable management strategy is vital to ensure optimal results.
Planning Your Data Centre
Data centre cable design is crucial for optimising performance, reliability, and scalability. It involves strategic planning of cable types, routing, labelling, and management to ensure efficient data flow, minimise interference, and support future growth. Proper design enhances cooling, reduces downtime, and simplifies maintenance in complex IT environments
Designing Data Centre Cabling
The best way to get started when designing a high-performance network infrastructure is by following these best practices:
- - Embrace scalability: it’s important your data centre is designed with scalability in mind, as future growth means you may need to expand your capabilities at a moment’s notice. Accordingly, design a data centre which is future proof and has flexibility at its core.
- - Cable management: you may feel cable management is an afterthought, but it should be one of your major priorities. A data cabling system which is well organised will not only provide you with high performance, but also minimise the risk of faults developing.
- - Invest in cooling: data centres can generate significant amounts of heat, and this can seriously impact the performance of your data centre. Accordingly, it’s vital you invest in a fully optimised cooling system to enhance energy efficiency and preserve performance.
- - Prepare backup supplies: a data centre relies on two things: data and power. This means you need to prepare backup supplies in case of emergencies. Designing alternative power supplies and offline storage solutions are paramount for keeping your data available at all times.
What Are Your Cabling Infrastructure Options?
All good data centres need an effective cabling infrastructure at the heart of their design. These are the systems which ensure a seamless flow of data and allow businesses to operate to their full potential. The most common examples of cabling infrastructures are:
- - Twisted pair cabling: comprising cables such as Cat 6, Cat 6e and Cat 7, twisted pair cabling is a popular choice for small businesses. Using twisted copper pair cables, these data cables offer high data transmission rates and provide shielding to minimize crosstalk/interference.
- - Fibre optic cabling: one of the more advanced cabling infrastructure options, fibre optic cables make long-distance data transmission (up to 10km) a reality. Using light signals sent down a glass cable, fibre optic cables can handle large amounts of data at high speed with ease.
- - Structured cabling: a versatile cabling solution, structured cabling infrastructures use numerous different cabling systems to support different needs e.g. telecommunication, data storage and networking. This approach ensures a cabling infrastructure which is flexible and helps future proof your data centre.
Upgrade Your Data Centre
Ultimately, if you build a high-performance data centre, it’s essential that it’s backed by a strong cable management system. You could have a state-of-the-art data centre, but without effective cable management, it’s going to struggle to provide anything more than average performance. So, invest in the best cabling you can and thoroughly plan your cable management system. Read more about our Structured Cabling for Data Centres
Data Cabinet Tidy Services
When your data centre cabling is messy and full of incorrect length and mis-coloured patch leads you will have problems maintaining your IT network. Furthermore incorrect patching can lead to slower networks and accidentally cut offs for plugged in hardware either within the cabinet or out on the operational floor. Lastly messy cabinets have the added risk of electrical leads coming unplugged when technicians are working through a mass of cables. Subsequently the power is lost to the hardware and the whole network is lost
Data Centre Service and Maintenance
The infrastructure inside a data centre is constantly changing. Therefore service and maintenance should always be an important part of the cabling design. We are able to offer preventative maintenance and service call outs to suit client needs. You can read more on these service son our dedicated Service and Maintenance Page
Data Centre Cabling Audit
For a free, no obligation, Data Centre survey contact one of our team. We also have a team of expert technicians who are on hand to provide fast and effective solutions to businesses experiencing issues with their data cabling infrastructure. From cable repair to fibre optic cable repair and testing.
Considering Upgrading Your Data Centre? Give us a call for expert guidance and aa free survey