Peter Hawtin, product manager HellermannTyton, says that pre-terminated cabling in the data centre makes for faster, more reliable and risk-adverse installations.Data Centre Management reports

The latest pre-terminated cabling solutions offer a faster, more reliable and risk adverse method of installing data cabling.  In the mission critical data centre environment - where bringing new client revenue streams online rapidly, avoiding downtime, business disruption and risk is paramount - this technology is particularly beneficial.

In any cabling installation, cable termination is one of the most time-consuming, complicated and error-prone elements.  Pre-terminated cabling solutions are ‘plug and play’ systems, which eliminate the need for on-site termination and testing.  They are an evolution from traditional installation methods, as the systems arrive pre-labelled and pre-tested, having been terminated by the manufacturer in line with rigorous ISO 9000-2000 quality controls.

Pre-terminated solutions can reduce the time needed by contractors to install cables by up to 75% on unshielded systems (UTP), and by as much as 85% on shielded and fibre systems.

Using traditional methods, the installation and termination of a typical 24-port patch panel takes approximately 1.25 hours.  Most of this time is spent terminating the 24 horizontal cables to the rear of the patch panel.  In a typical 42U cabinet containing 28 x 24 port UTP patch panels, the length of time spent terminating these panels would be around 35 hours.   On a shielded (FTP) system, the time would be close to 50 hours.  By contrast, an end-to-end pre-terminated solution of the same size could be installed in just nine hours – a saving of three and a half days of labour on the UTP system and more than a week on shielded systems.

The typical data centre room configuration involves rows of web, database and file servers, which in order for them to function, are linked through a network of infrastructure cabling and switches.  Pre-terminated cabling is the perfect solution for data centres because of its ability to be installed in a fraction of the time of a traditional cabling approach. 

The rack-to-rack configuration of most data centre infrastructure cabling means that the time saved by deploying a pre-terminated cabling solution is even greater than that saved during more traditional panel to work area installations.  The normal cabling configuration may include diverse routing to minimise the risk associated with physical cable damage.  This diverse routing of cabling can also be utilised to ensure there is sufficient load balancing within the data centre. 

With more and more organisations insisting on the performance offered by Category 6 cabling, installation quality is paramount.  Pre-terminated systems mean no risk of potential on-site termination problems, making them ideal for the high-performance cabling requirements of data centres.  Each individual link is terminated at the factory to ISO 11801 and EIA/TIA 568 standards, and fully tested before being delivered to the site.

Installation is fast, but the system’s capabilities are never compromised, guaranteeing repeatable and reliable quality.  A pre-terminated, cassette-to-cassette configuration works well in a data centre environment, thanks to the ease of installing ‘plug and play’, cabinet-to-cabinet links. 

Fibre installation and termination is also labour intensive and highly skilled.  Pre-terminated fibre solutions have been available for some years, but work in the same way as their copper counterparts.  The latest pre-terminated fibre cassettes present multiple factory-terminated and tested LC connections within rugged plastic casing, which protects the terminations and reduces the risk of damage to the sensitive fibres. 

These provide very high-density 48 port distribution into a single rack space.  Bend radius is controlled to ensure improved transmission of the signal, allowing very high performance single-mode systems to be used with the same ease and speed as a multi-mode solution.
With higher performance being squeezed from today’s cabling systems, pre-terminated solutions are the key to ensuring customers get the full potential of the cabling they choose.  Virtually no variance in quality of termination means guaranteed performance.  
Data centre architects and IT managers looking to install their cabling infrastructure in the shortest time possible to rapidly bring on new client revenue streams, reduce disruption, downtime and project risk for themselves should definitely look towards pre-terminated solutions to help them reach these goals – in fact they can’t afford not to.