EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
EHAB KANARY , VICE PRESIDENT EMERGING MARKETS EUROPE , MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA , COMMSCOPE
ata centre deployments are at the heart of
D most IT strategies . As such , having one that responds to the mission critical needs of the business is an essential pillar in supporting business goals . However , to do this , the network infrastructure needs to be designed in such a way as to anticipate new industry trends and standards , while serving the business needs in a highly agile fashion . The challenge the industry now faces is to maintain high levels of availability while offering faster responses to rapid changes in business , application and user demand . The best way to achieve this is to not only build in these requirements at the early stage of the design process , but also keep this principle central to the planning process throughout every stage of the infrastructure ’ s expansion .
Good design is at the core of all highperforming data centres . Exploding demand for bandwidth is pushing data centre teams to rethink their network infrastructure as they look to increase port count and fibre density , increase lane capacities , reduce latency and prepare to migrate to higher speeds . Easier said than done . Even as data centres transition their fabrics from 10 and 40GbE to 25 , 50 and 100GbE , standards have been developed for
400G , and committees are forming in readiness for 800G +. Judging by the Ethernet roadmap , the path forward is neither clear nor straight . Driven by the emergence of many new technologies – including more efficient modulation , new transmission schemes and new fibre types – data centre managers are faced with more choices than ever . Furthermore , as network complexity and fibre density increase , so do the challenges of documenting and tracking the connected environment . Migrating to faster speeds adds more components , cables and connections – all of which must be monitored and managed . Manually documenting the connected environment using spreadsheets is virtually impossible . As such , we are seeing a focus on the following :
• An increased deployment of preterminated fibre cabling solutions providing high-quality factory-level optical losses in the field , while greatly reducing installation times in the data centre .
• More interest and investment in automated infrastructure management ( AIM ) platforms and a better understanding of the ROI ( and risk mitigation ) associated with managing the physical layer .
• Higher bandwidth requirements driving technologies such as highly dense rollable ribbon fibre trunks , to support core counts in the thousands per cable and better duct and pathway densities than can be achieved using matrix ribbon or traditional fibre cables .
• An increasing need for purposebuilt overhead fibre pathways which adequately manage cabling volumes and maintain an appropriate bend radius for fibre links .
• Development of Very Small Form Factor ( VSFF ) connector types , such as the SN connector , to facilitate further increases in capacity in the data centre cabling plant at the patch panel and switch faceplate .
Whether it ’ s to stay ahead of technology developments and new applications or to address cost-efficiency opportunities , data centre expansions and improvement projects are continuing around the world and it ’ s clear that organisations will continue to invest accordingly to ensure quality , performance and intelligence .
GOOD DESIGN IS AT THE CORE OF ALL HIGH- PERFORMING DATA CENTRES .
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