Data Center Infrastructure Solutions: Define Your Needs | Corning

With the continued expansion and growth in the data center, a well-planned cabling infrastructure is critical for both present and future success. The fundamental concerns that a cabling infrastructure must address are reliability, manageability, scalability and flexibility. A structured cabling system provides a flexible cabling plan to address the commonly performed tasks of moving, adding, or changing the infrastructure as the network grows. A well-planned optical cable infrastructure will typically be utilized for more than 20 years and will have to be operational through several iterations of system equipment solutions and multiple generations of protocol data-rate increases.

Today’s data center cabling infrastructure must be designed to offer a competitive advantage and a lower cost of ownership immediately. As a result, the evolution path to higher speeds such as 40G and 100G data rates, as well as next-generation applications such as cloud computing and virtualization, must be ensured early in the data center cabling infrastructure design and planning process.

As the name implies, the data center is the data processing, routing and storage center in the network. Increased efficiency is becoming more and more important as data-intense applications come online. With this, data center rack space, cable pathways, cooling, installation, maintenance and risk avoidance become increasingly important considerations when planning and designing the data center.

Today’s data center cabling infrastructure must be designed to offer a competitive advantage and a lower cost of ownership immediately. As a result, the evolution path to higher speeds such as 40G and 100G data rates, as well as next-generation applications such as cloud computing and virtualization, must be ensured early in the data center cabling infrastructure design and planning process.

In recent history, we used stacks of servers and large tape carousels; today, we see blade servers and RAID (redundant array of inde­pendent disks) systems. Your cabling infra­structure must be capable of servicing these ever-changing needs in the data center. The most efficient optical infrastructure is one in which all components are preterminated in the factory. All connectors are installed and tested in the factory and packaged such that components are not damaged during installation.

The installer unpacks the components, pulls the preconnectorized cable assembly into place, snaps in all the connectors, and installs the patch cords connecting to the end equipment..and the system is up and running. This is the fastest installation method and provides the best solution for turning up servers quickly and with the least risk of not meeting the customer’s availability expectations.