Integrated Wiring has a huge impact on your storage environment

Cables can be used as data and power pipelines for about 15 years, which means that the cabling system has a huge and long-term impact in your storage environment. This article describes whether to select optical fiber cables or copper cables.

How long will you use a data storage system?

From a positive perspective, it usually takes six years. The average service life of the server is four years. What about the data center cabling system?

Cables can be used as data and power pipelines for about 15 years, which means that the cabling system has a huge and long-term impact in your storage environment.

"You must consider the next-generation data center storage network in advance ." DennisMartin, founder and president of Demartek in Arvada, said in a speech at StorageDecisions2012. The storage administrator needs to consider the current selection of cables and connectors because the speed is improved and the demand is also changed.

For a distance of more than 50 meters, vintage orange optical fiber cables (especially OM1 optical fiber cables of 62.5 microns) are no longer able to meet high-speed bandwidth needs, such as 10 GB Ethernet and 16 GB optical fiber channels.

The industry is upgrading the OM3 and OM4 light green optical fiber cables to 50 micron for long-distance connections. OM4 is ideal for horizontal cabling and inter-IDC cabling, whether for Ethernet or fiber channel.

"If you are using multimode optical fiber, you should purchase OM4," Martin said. "The reason why OM4 is recommended is that it can be used for both 40g and G Ethernet, but also for high-speed fiber channel ."

In addition, many high-speed connections are achieved by binding four or more links, which requires different connectors, such as four-channel SFP (QSFP +) connectors. This is also true for copper cables.

"When you upgrade the cable rate, you will be more interested in optical fiber cables, because the signal transmission distance of copper cables is shorter than that of optical cables ." Martin said. "However, copper cables can still be used within the Cabinet, between the top of the cabinet and between adjacent cabinets, as long as the distance is within seven or eight meters ."