What distance will unscreened Augmented Category 6 cables support 10 Gigabit?

Probably 55 metres although this may be a bit optimistic and only possible if other installation mitigation procedures are adopted e.g. separating out the patch cords and the first 20 metres of cabling. TSB 155 reduces this distance to 37 metres.

Connectix has chosen to develop a fully shielded 10 Gigabit solution available in two formats either as a traditional on-site terminated product or as a Pre-term solution. Either way the shielded solution guarantees 100m. The Pre-term has certainly been the more popular solution in most Data Centres because of reduced installation time and guaranteed quality.

 

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What is a Tier II Classification?

Tier Classification is a part of the TIA 942 Draft Standard. This classification enables building professionals to summarise Data Centre resilience to downtime. A Tier II Data Centre should have 99.749% availability during a year.

 

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What is the typical heat dissipation within a server rack?

Typically in 2003 you would design for an average of 1.7kW with a maximum of 5kW being a possibility, however with the advent of blade servers it is not uncommon to find IT Managers looking at 25kW+ per rack in 2006. This will obviously change the design criteria of a data centre.

 

Our advice would always start with clearly identifying the likely maximum output from each rack (this will be available from the server manufacturer).  Once you have some maxima it is possible to identify the probable solutions.

 

Rack cooling in a generally air conditioned room is usually possible up to about 2kW per rack.  Underfloor air distribution methods give about 4kW per rack of cooling and forced air cooling works up to about 7kW heat load per rack.  Beyond that it would be necessary to move to more exotic technologies such as water-cooled racks.

 

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What other regulations and legislation should be considered when designing a Data Centre?

• EU directives
• CENELEC, IEC, ISO and CISPR standards
• Building regulations
• Planning permission
• Legislation
        – Disability
        – Health & safety
        – Electricity
• British standards

 

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What standards should I reference for building a data centre in the UK?

• TIA 942 Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centres, April 2005
        – Substantial, available, all-American

• EN 50173-5 (Draft) Information technology – data centres
        – Smaller scope, not available, European perspective

• BICSI 942, ‘complementary’ to TIA 942

• ISO/IEC NP (Draft) 24764 Information technology -- Generic cabling for data-centres

 

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