DCA
In my lifetime, I have visited and site
reviewed literary 100s of data centres and
can honestly say not one was the same,
however among many other virtues, the
good ones always have the same thing in
common when it comes to cabling and
that’s “good housekeeping”.
By this I mean the setting of firm
unbreakable rules and I’m not just
referring to what goes either above and
or below the raised floor but also what
goes on, on the shop floor as well. When
it comes to plumbing in a new racks and
or installing new servers/hardware there’s
only one way to do it and that’s the right
way. Here are just a few tips I found to
help steer you in the right direction:
1) All server room racks and equipment
within them should be labelled with
sever names, IP address and the name or
contact information of the administrator
responsible for the servers within that rack.
be a low cost solution to a troublesome
issue. I actually came across a good
example of this the other day which was
designed in the UK called “sergeantclip.
com” simple and clever little cable clamp
which works.
Even the most energy efficient data centre
would struggle to hit its PUE annual
targets with both hands tied behind
their backs so it’s important to recognise
that this type of best practice need to be
applied to not only one’s internal IT staff
and installers but also any clients that rent
space from you.
True energy efficiency can only be
realised when everyone is pushing in the
same directions and playing their part,
therefore the enforcement of good cable
management and Housekeeping in the
data centre is not only essential its vital, if
that feel good factor is going to last.
2) Proper server room cable management
is a science and its best to get some
experienced who knows what they
are doing rather than cut corners on
something that far easier to get right
first time than try to fix later as later
never seems to come. If implemented
and managed properly it can reduce
troubleshooting time dramatically.
3) Determine specific zones for cable runs
and keep them away from electrical lines.
a never ending line of trucks pulling up
delivering all the physical infrastructure
needed to make this a reality. We are
talking about everything from steel support
beams and banks of LED screens for the
state of art NOC; to generators and 316
Stainless Steel shut off valves for the
cooling system.
Back that up by calculating all the hours of
civil, mechanical and electrical engineering
time which went into bringing everything
together to enable you to realize your
vision. I’m hoping you are now visualising
yourself standing in front of a fully
operational data centre which promises
to be the most energy efficient facility of
its kind, which you should be rightly proud
off. The question is - how long will this
euphoria last?
www.intelligentcio.com
4) Be sure to keep fibre and copper cables
on separate runs as the weight of copper
cables can crush fibre.
5) Allow enough room in your server room
cabling design to accommodate the
proper bend radius for your cable types.
6) Colour coding cables greatly simplifies
management, and properly labelling
individual cables will save countless
hours pulling up floor tiles trying to trace
a bad cable.
7) Always make sure the racks and servers
are round the right way, it sounds obvious
but you will be surprised how many times I
still see it done.
8) Investigate the possibility of investing
in some cable management clips they can
ABOUT
Steve Hone is the co-founder of
Data Centre Alliance and sits on the
management team as Operations
Director. Having been in the IT Industry
since the heady days of the ‘.com boom’
and has been lucky enough to work
for and with some great people and
organisations on critical IT projects
over the years.
In 2007 he co-founded Colofinder.
co.uk, an independent data centre
search and selection consultancy
providing specialist advice and
guidance on the colocation market
globally. Prior to getting into IT and
Data Centres Steve was an Electrical
and Mechanical Chartered Engineer
in the MOD before eventually moving
into the commercial world of Sales and
Management.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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