High Speed Data Transport Feature Editorial

Enterprises today are increasingly looking to leverage the power of their data centers, seeking cost-effective solutions for data center consolidation and virtualization, including technologies for more rapidly and more efficiently delivering data and information to users. Panduit’s Steve Skiest, manager of product development for high-speed copper, explained the market dynamics driving these high speed data transport solutions.

 

“Data center managers are under pressure to provide more efficient and cost effective solutions. This is driving interest in server virtualization and server consolidation. Server virtualization in particular is the key application that will drive the need for 10Gig networking,” offers Skiest.    “The implementation of server virtualization increases the availability of applications by sharing them across multiple virtual machines. Virtualization not only increases the utilization of server hardware, but it also increases the number of total servers in the network. This increases the physical server’s need for more I/O to the network. Consequently, as server virtualization becomes more prevalent in data centers, an increasing number of virtual machines are deployed, thus even more driving the need for 10Gig connections.”

 

Tinley Park, Ill.-based Panduit offers “best in class” physical media for 10 Gigabit and higher data transmission, which includes OM3 optical fiber and Category 6A copper cabling media solutions for 10 Gigabit Ethernet performance and high-speed fiber channel operation.

 

“These are all made of an extremely robust design and offer exceptional margin over the standard. For example, our TX6A 10 Gig solution offers a 10dB margin over the far-end alien cross-talk requirements of the standard, thus allowing customers to forego time-consuming and costly field alien testing. This makes our solution easy to use and lower risk for data center managers,” Skiest said in an interview with TMC.

 

Panduit has also recently rolled out a new solution within its HSDT portfolio, called 10G SFP+ Copper Cable Assemblies. 

 

“These are factory terminated copper cable assemblies with very high speed parallel shielded pair cable called twin-axial,” Skiest explains. “These copper assemblies are available out to 23 feet and complement our 10G fiber solution that plugs into SFP+ optical transceivers. With the new Panduit offering, we are one of very few physical infrastructure suppliers that can provide all the different needed media types for 10Gig and beyond.”

 

SFP+ is the latest generation interface for a 10Gigabit host port. Similar to previous larger interfaces, it is “hot pluggable” and allows easy interchange of different reaches of optical transceivers as well as a passive copper cable assembly option.   

 

According to Skiest, medium and large data centers of nearly any industry or business can enjoy benefits of using equipment and cabling with SFP+ interfaces. Nearly all deployments will be a hybrid of copper/fiber mix, with the length limitation on copper of seven meters or 23 feet. Physically smaller spaces can have a higher per cent of cost effective copper, he explains.

 

With cost-savings initiatives top of mind for IT decision makers, Panduit believes SFP+ is the best choice in this category.

 

“The top of rack architecture using SFP+ can be a cost effective deployment strategy compared to a distributed network, as the number of connections and cabling is reduced,” said Skiest. “If one also implements I/O server consolidation and put LAN and SAN traffic on the same server, further capital savings is large by greatly reducing the number of servers and NICs. Operating costs also go down, thanks to power savings that vary by application, but can be 15 percent or more.”

 

By moving to SFP+ enabled top of rack architecture, users can prepare their layouts for the next generation of high speed data transport solutions, which will run networks at 40 and 100Gig. The IEEE (News - Alert) standard development process for 40Gig and 100Gig Ethernet is ongoing and expected to be completed before the end of 2010. Panduit’s development of physical media to support these significantly higher data rates is already well under way, and expects to launch a solution, similar to its SFP+ copper line, for 40G interfaces early in 2010.

 

Panduit’s HSDT innovation is part of its larger vision of helping business build smarter, more efficient data centers by leveraging converged networking technologies within the entire data center to create a holistic view of the overall infrastructure.

 

“With the additional of 10G SFP+ copper, Panduit is now one of very few suppliers that provide the complete unified physical infrastructure for data centers including optical fiber connectivity, twisted pair and RJ45 connectivity and twin-axial cable assemblies,” said Skiest. “Further, we provide fully optimized deployment infrastructure for unified fabric with our racks, cabinets, wire management, grounding and labeling product lines.”