What is a Data Centre?
A data centre is simply a place that stores information, network equipment and servers that your business can access. They can be onsite or remotely accessed. Two examples of where data centres are most commonly used are Apple iCloud and Google Drive. For the consumer market, these are two types of cloud backup services that store your files on a server somewhere else in the world.
What is Data Centre Cabling?
Data centre cabling is as important as the servers used to store data. With anything to do with computers, the data transfer can only transfer as fast as the slowest component. This is referred to as a bottleneck. When it comes to the data centre cabling, you want to go for a high transfer rate. The faster your data centres work, the more reliable they will be for the user accessing the data.
Why is it important to be structured?
Keeping a data centre structured and tidy may seem laborious and time consuming, but the fact remains, it can save you time in the future, it can be easier to maintain, and can save you money. There are three important factors of a data centre cabling solution to consider and they are as follows:
Cable management for any computer network is very time consuming, but it is also very important. Data centre cabling management will make it easier to understand which part of the data servers are connected to each other. Computers and servers generate a lot of heat, and messy data centre cabling will obstruct how the heat is dissipated, causing the server to slow down and potentially shut down.
Unfortunately, in all aspects of technology, things can and will go wrong. So if you have not structured your data centre cabling efficiently, it will be harder to identify the problem. When a data centre cabling solution is implemented correctly, an engineer can identify which switch is causing an issue quicker. When cables are messy, the engineer will have to find where each cable is going individually. Causing a longer down time.
Having your cables laid out appropriately, can save energy. As mentioned previously, heat is a big problem for data centres and they need to be cooled down constantly. When data centre cabling is not managed appropriately, cold air cannot get to the server. By having the cabling properly managed, more cold air can reach the data server and therefore needs less cold air to cool it down.
Can cabling be laid in a way to reduce power consumption?
Energy and running costs for a data server can get expensive. So is there a way to save money through lowering how much power is used? Well, there is a solution that moves data centre cabling out of the way to allow better temperature control. This is by putting the cables into an overhead tray. By removing unnecessary obstructions, it means more cold air can get to the server blades. Less cool air needed means less energy being used. With savings of up to 25%, it could save a business thousands.