DCA
ABOUT
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:
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?
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
www.intelligentcio.com/me
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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
recognize that this type of best practice
need to be applied to not only ones
internal IT staff and installers but also
any clients that rent space from you.
True energy efficiency can only be
realized 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.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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