Trends in Data Center Design – A Technology Perspective
By John Thompson
Listed below are some of the technological trends that are impacting current data center design practices, particularly as they relate to cabling and cable management infrastructure, as well as cabinet layout/placement:
- Migration to 40Gb/100Gb/400Gb Data Center Backbones – Backbone design should support today’s 1Gb/10Gb network architectures while laying the foundation for efficient and effective migration to 40Gb, 100Gb, and 400Gb. This migration path is also driving the use of 24-fiber trunk cables (vs. 12-fiber) as well as paving the way for other trunk solutions, such as Base-8 (8-fiber, 16-fiber, etc.) trunk solutions.
- Converged Infrastructure for Compute and Storage – Converged infrastructure is an architecture that supports both compute and storage on the same physical appliance. Among other benefits, this architecture generally requires less cabling within the data center, thereby reducing up-front infrastructure costs.
- Spine-Leaf Architecture – In data center environments where latency, high capacity distribution and performance are a prime concern, a trend toward mesh/fabric networks providing multiple paths for data transmission is being increasingly adopted. Spine-Leaf (“fat-tree”) architecture is a type of mesh network that enables any compute and storage device to work together in a predictable and scalable manner regardless of physical location with the data center. Unlike traditional architectures (“three-tier” or “north-south”), the Spine-Leaf architecture eliminates the need for aggregation switches while improving latency, enabling higher throughput, and reducing potential points of failure, and it is more agile in its ability to support the many and varied enterprise applications as they evolve over time.
- Modular “Plug-n-Play” Fiber Distribution – Traditional custom terminated and spliced fiber cable distribution systems are being replaced with “plug-n-play” pre-terminated fiber with modular cassettes and MPO connectors. Among other benefits, modular systems can be deployed rapidly, provide for very high density, and minimize the possibility of human error during installation.
- Above Cabinet Cable Distribution – The rapidly changing environment of a Data Center is driving cabling distribution above the cabinets (as opposed to under a raised floor) where it is more manageable, accessible and easy to reconfigure and upgrade without major effort.