Contents

	Welcome Note
	First Comes The Last Mile
	Reliability! Manageability! Space Saving!
	Innovative Cable Management
	ADC acquires LGC Wireless
	ADC KRONE At A Glance
	Get a Grip

RELIABILITY! MANAGEABILITY! SPACE SAVING!

Datacenter Infrastructure.

India is emerging as a key datacenter market with huge growth and is expected to expand 45% in space and 80% in service value by 2010. Data centers being one of the most critical resources within an organization, Indian organizations are focusing on building Tier III and Tier IV reliability level datacenters. Building a datacenter with higher reliability levels involves higher investments and planning. When you consider that 70 percent of network downtime can be attributed to physical layer problems, specifically cabling faults, it’s paramount that more consideration be given to infrastructure design.

Reliability

Uninterrupted service and continuous access are critical to the daily operation and productivity of your business. With downtime translating directly to loss of income, data centers must be designed for redundant, fail-safe reliability and availability. Depending on the business, downtime can cost anywhere from $50K to over $6 million per hour (Check figure below).

Source: Strategic Solutions

Data center reliability is also defined by the performance of the infrastructure. As information is sent back and forth within your facility and with the outside world, huge streams of data are transferred to and from equipment areas at extremely high data rates. The infrastructure must consistently support the flow of data without errors that cause retransmission and delays. Cabling and connectivity backed by a reputable vendor with guaranteed error-free performance help avoid poor transmission within the data center. A sub-standard performing data canter can be just as costly and disruptive to your business as downtime.

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. (Note that most active equipment is replaced every three to five years.)

The protection of cabling and connections is a key factor in ensuring data center reliability. Components that maintain proper bend radius throughout cable routing paths are critical to that protection. When cabling is bent beyond its specified minimum bend radius, it can cause transmission failures, and as more cables are added to a routing path, the possibility of bend radius violation increases. Pathways must maintain proper bend radius at all points where the cable makes a bend — both at initial installation and when cables are accessed or added. The separation of cable types in horizontal pathways and physical protection of both cable and connections should also be implemented to prevent possible damage.

Manageability

Manageability is key to optimizing your data center. The infrastructure should be designed as a highly reliable and flexible utility to accommodate disaster recovery, upgrades and modifications. Manageability starts with strategic, unified cable management that keeps cabling and connections properly stored and organized, easy to locate and access, and simple to reconfigure. Cable routing paths must be clearly defined and intuitive to follow while enabling easy deployment, separation, access, reduced congestion, and room for growth. This is especially important in data centers with large volumes of cables. Cables managed in this way improve network reliability by reducing the possibility of cable damage, bend radius violations, and the time required for identifying, routing, and rerouting cables.

The use of a central patching location in a cross-connect scenario provides a logical and easy-to-manage infrastructure whereby all network elements have permanent equipment cable connections that once terminated, are never handled again. In this scenario, all modifications, rerouting, upgrades, and maintenance activities are accomplished using semi-permanent patch cord connections on the front of the cross-connect systems.

The advantage to deploying centralized patching in your data center include:

• Lower operating costs by greatly reducing the time it takes for modifications, upgrades and maintenance.
• Enhanced reliability by making changes on the patching field rather than moving sensitive equipment connections.
• Reduced risk of down time with the ability to isolate network segments for troubleshooting and quickly reroute circuits in a disaster recovery situation.

ADC KRONE has many products that address these factors and offers better manageability. Deploying common rack frames with ample vertical and horizontal cable management simplifies rack assembly, organizes cable, facilitates cable routing and keeps equipment cool by removing obstacles to air movement. Cable management at the rack also protects the bend radius and manages cable slack efficiently. Connectors must also be easily defined and accessed for maintenance or reconfiguration with minimal disruption to adjacent connections. Another solution that offers manageability at the physical layer is the intelligent cabling or the Physical layer management solution. Intelligent Cabling Systems will reduce the cost of network ownership by solving issues like Unplanned downtime, Inefficient manual moves, adds and changes, Redundant ports, Inaccurate records etc. It offers considerable increases in the network management efficiency.

Space Savings

Real Estate in India is getting more and more expensive. There has to be considerations in saving space. Also, depending on the reliability requirement of a datacenter the cost per square feet increases. For example, a Reliability Tier IV datacenter which offers 99.995% availability will cost more than $1000 per square feet. Data center racks and equipments can take up an enormous amount of real estate, and the future demand for more network connections, bandwidth and storage may require even more space. With insufficient floor space as the topmost concern among IT managers today, maximizing space resources is the most critical aspect of data center design.

While designing a data centre, ensure that future growth is included in the assessment of how much space the data center requires. Also ensure that the layout includes sufficient areas of flexible “white space”, or unused floor area that can easily accommodate additional racks or cabinets and the space surrounding the data center can be easily and inexpensively annexed if the requirements exceed the current facility.

Cabling and connectivity components of the data center infrastructure can have a direct impact on the amount of real estate required in your data center. High-density solutions require less rack, floor, and pathway space, which leave more room for flexible reconfiguration and growth.

Dileep Kumar
Director Product Management
Carrier & Enterprise Business