Brand-Rex High Density Fibre Solution optimises use of space in BT Operate’s data centres

Space today is an expensive commodity, and nowhere more so than in Data Centres. The need to pack ever more equipment including cabling into more and more confined spaces is being driven by the increasing costs of the buildings that house them, and the land they sit on.

This is why a company such as BT attempts to keep its use of space in its data centres to a minimum, while also increasing their cabling density, enabling it to offer more and better services to its customers.

BT Operate, the operations division of BT, runs communications services for customers over BT's core network and systems, as well as handling BT's global 21CN platform. It implements and operates the software, hardware and networks that supply BT's services to its own other divisions –  Retail, Global Services and Wholesale – as well as their external customers.

An important element helping to optimise use of space in its nationwide chain of data centres is a newly developed high density fibre frame, custom built for BT Operate by Brand-Rex.

The relationship between Brand-Rex and BT started when BT Operate was looking for a new source of fibre frames. It felt its original supplier didn’t provide value for money in both the products and services supplied, partly because it was shipping its products from the USA, but importantly because the products presented were generic and not specifically designed to meet their data centre needs, resulting in overcapacity.

“Effectively, we often wanted a half rack solution,” explains Paul Woodward, lead data centre technical specialist for BT Operate, based in Cardiff. “Also, the cable management in the original rack was not as good as we thought it could have been. So, we turned to Brand-Rex and worked very closely with them and the cabinet manufacturer on the development of custom built cabinets.

“As the end user, we were able to give them constant feedback on what was positive in terms of the design work. The result is, we have produced what we think is one of the best high density patching frames for both fibre and copper on the market today. That is why we are using them as standard in all BT Operate data centres.”
Woodward estimates the new high density frames are giving BT Operate around 30 per cent more capacity – with an increase in footprint of only about 5 per cent.

“It’s a major plus for us, because we can use this extra space to deploy servers, for instance, and achieve a significant cost benefit.”

The first data centre to take the new system was in Derby, which was installed and implemented in November 2008. Since then, it has been put into operation in several more BT Operate data centres, including ones in Cardiff, Rochdale, Croydon, and Oswestry.

“All along, BT people have been very enthusiastic about what the new frame offers them in terms of the cabinet and the fibre management facilities,” says Ken Hodge, Brand-Rex’s R&D manager. “They could see that it had the potential to solve a lot of handling and operational issues, and give major benefits to the installer. In fact, they were so impressed with it, they took what was effectively a prototype, which has been the basis for the design of all the other systems that have followed since.”

The 45U cabinet accommodates up to 1,824 fibre ports in standard configuration and measures 900mm x 500mm. It can be deployed as a standalone unit, or bayed back-to-back, or side-to-side directly against walls, to save floor space. When bayed back-to-back, a pair of cabinets’ footprint is the same as that of a conventional server cabinet (1000mm deep). The unit features removable panels and doors at the front, side and rear, which can be closed and locked to secure the equipment.
“For operators, the main thing is that they get a good density of cabling within the cabinet, which they can use as a patching field as they operate the system,” Hodge explains. “This patching field is open and front-facing, which is an advantage as it offers lots of patch cord management space. Also, the clever slack-storage system enables you to stock and use only one length of patch cord regardless of the distance between ports, which helps reduce the inventory required.
“These built-in working advantages of the design make the lives of installers and operators much easier, but such factors are not obvious, many people don’t appreciate how important they are, and they are generally not on offer in the industry. Typically, it will only be the experienced operators actually running data centres who can see just how valuable such features are.”

The work undertaken with Brand-Rex to date represents only the first stage of data centre improvements. Now, a major new programme is about to be implemented within BT Operate -  its Data Centre Transformation Project -  which will run for seven years, and the Brand-Rex fibre frame will play a central role in this.

As Woodward says: “Like everyone else, the challenge we face is to minimise usage of space, so we are looking to virtualise all of our server estate and at the same time reduce the number of physical sites by vacating some premises. Brand-Rex’s fibre frame will help us to do that because it enables us to get more cable into a smaller space without loosing manageability.”

Woodward is impressed with how the new frame makes life for the end user as easy as possible.

“For example, the network systems are located at the top half of the rack, the servers at the bottom half, so to connect a server to a network board requires a single cable. You are not constantly taking the floor up to run cables in all the time, as you used to do, and it does not require as skilled a person to do the job. It also improves security because you can lock the cabinets and leave them like that. The only time you would need to go back into cabinets would be in times of failure.

“Redundancy is another important feature. Two cable routes are used, a yellow route and a blue route, to connect to a server, which do not cross anywhere. So as well as having backup in power, and in server capability, we also have backup in the physical connectivity.

Also involved in the overall data centre project was Fujitsu, in the form of its Infrastructure Cabling Services operation, which was responsible for designing the BT Data Centres and worked with Brand-Rex on the new frame. Alan Bird, Fujitsu senior technical consultant for cabling, explains.

“We were implementing central patching systems for BT, both Class EA and OM3 fibre. BT wanted an alternative source for its copper and fibre frames so we worked with Brand-Rex to develop the high density cabinet designed to take Brand-Rex’s angled copper panels. The aim was then to go on and develop the same thing for fibre.

“The result is a high density, cabling solution that gives BT Operate a patching backbone at the heart of its data centres. It means you can connect any piece of equipment to any other just by doing a patch. It has become a core element in their approach to the cabling of their data centres.”