Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 05 | Page 29

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 29