Copper cabling in the data center remains dynamic

Copper cabling in the data center remains dynamic

When it comes to data center Cabling Technology, optical fiber may have some advantages in speed and length, but copper cabling and interconnection are still very active. More importantly, copper cabling is likely to continue to be used in some corners of the data center infrastructure for many years.

 

"People may try to discard copper cable, but it will not die," said Mr. wollongski, senior vice president of marketing and development at Emulex ." Emulex manufactures a series of self-owned Ethernet adapters and Fiber Channel converged network adapters, which are the same as Cisco, HP, EMC, HDS, Huawei and other companies as network product providers.

"The final data point, we are investigating from a host connection to krien, is that over 20% of the host's Gigabit ports are still copper ports. Because of the cost, CAT6 cables are still required by the data center. In addition, most people do not need to connect their networks with optical cables ." He said.

According to predictions from the Dell Oro group research firm, by 2018, 80% of servers will be connected over 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and most internal rack connections will use some form of copper cabling, especially when short-distance connections are required, such as connecting storage devices and switches to servers.

This wiring is likely to use 10GBase-CR shielded twisted pair cabling, a cable (DAC) format that can be directly connected, it includes fixed-length cables integrated with SFP + to both ends, or cabling using twisted pair Cat6 or 10GBASE-TA copper to increase the network speed of transmitted data from MB to 10 Gbps, and is backward compatible with 1 GB Ethernet cables, which means there is no need to upgrade the wiring.

The network interface card and the LAN (LOM) on the 10GBASE-T motherboard are configured with a wider range of servers. Dell's Oro Group believes that more and more data centers will be seen in the next few years, especially enterprise-level data centers, which will accelerate their 10GBase-T deployment.

The study predicts that 10GBASE-T port shipments will double those of SFP + DAC in 2017, driven primarily by a wide user base using traditional 1Gbpsu.

The unshielded twisted pair link between the server and the top-level rack switch will be refreshed.

Not all data centers are the same. In each case, it is difficult to predict the exact update path, because each data center is not the same. Some places have higher bandwidth, latency, and throughput requirements than other people's cabling infrastructure, depending on their business. Many data centers deploy blade servers and servers in different environments. Wiring and upgrading between lines and racks is often a solution, rather than a thorough redesign, this usually leads to the simultaneous deployment of products of different technologies and extensive mixing.

Of course, there is a feeling that the broader data center market tends to be subdivided into network requirements for 2.0 companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon cloud service providers and ultra-large-scale operating facilities, this forces 25GbE to migrate to the 40GbE interface of the server more quickly, and relies on 10-Gigabit optical cables to interconnect with top-level racks and aggregation switches.

Those technology-leading data centers may have to use fiber optics for the benefits of newer technologies. "Early Optical Fiber consumers will participate in the formulation and use of these standards, and people use their data centers in different ways ." "Google or Facebook companies provide services to users and their revenue comes from data centers," said Carrie higubi, Global Data Center Solutions and Services Director of network cabling expert Simon, therefore, the cost base of an enterprise is significantly different from that of other industries (such as banks." Different architecture methods may affect cable selection. For example, some methods are used to replace the top-level rack switch, and a switch is used to cut off the power at the end of each rack to replace the switch. These configurations can be selected between UTP, DAC, or fiber-optic cables, especially centralized switching in small data centers, which is the most expensive option and is not widely used for server virtualization.

Cost is an important factor

Obviously, cost is an important factor in any data center's cabling and upgrading decision-making. Other factors, including availability, standardization, power consumption, distance, and wiring media, also play their own role. The next generation 40GBASE-T standard of IEEE is defined as a 40 Gbps classification structure. Eight copper cabling systems have stronger shielding capabilities to prevent crosstalk and increase the signal distance. However, five to seven years later, the product allows users to accept their price and energy consumption levels.

"The 40GBASE-T technology has been available for one and a half years. Currently, because of its high price, there are not many users to accept, it takes three to five years to lower the price of this outstanding product ." "In the industry, some of these users are using 40GbE optical fiber now," said higbi ."

In other places, many vendors have developed DAC in rack interconnection 25gbe and 50 gbeSFP +, and top-level rack switch, the speed of 100GGbE and 200GbE can be provided on multiple ports through four optical fiber cables or copper wires.

"We think copper cable may not be the main interconnect medium, but it is one of the main interconnect media used by 100GbE in the data center ." "Who believes an 8 m cable is enough to meet rack cabling requirements of 98%," said arlong Martin, Senior Marketing Director at Mellanox. "In the space of a large data center, the rack is mainly wired to 100GbE, which is why most servers migrate 10GbEQSFP to 25Gbe or 50GbE ports ."

However, in small hosted data center facilities, 1000BASE-T and 10GBASE-T twisted pair cabling will still have a huge demand in the future due to cost and management advantages. "Most people did not expect copper cables to be used in 10 Gigabit Networks, but this is definitely the case ." He said.

"I don't think copper will soon die out ." Said higbi. "If 10GBASE-T enters most data centers, even those servers are highly virtualized, this technology and product will still be applied for a long time ."

Speed (Gbps)	Distance (m)	Name	Standard/year	Cable requirements
1	100	1000Base-T	802.3ab1999	Cat 5 for at least 5 types of cables
10	100	10GBase-T	802.3an 2006	Category 6 cable
40	> 30	40GBase-T	802.3b1 (draft)	Class 8 shielded cable d