New Data Center Standard

mstansberry writes to tell us that the Telecommunications Industry Association (the people who brought you the CAT standards for unshielded twisted pair cabling) recently published a 148 page document meant to standardize the design considerations for every single aspect of a data center. The standard covers everything from site selection to rack mounting methods.

Comments

twisting

[seanadams.com]

Speaking of CAT standards, has anyone else had a good look at the differences between CAT3, CAT5, etc?

CAT5 just seems to be twisted a little tighter, but CAT6 actually modifies the twist gradually, in a cycle that repeats every few feet, with each pair 90 degrees "out of phase" from the next. Plus theres (sometimes) a plastic "spine" in there to maintain spacing and/or bend radius. It's not obvious to me how varying the twists-per-foot along the cable should help - anyone know?

Re:twisting

[william_w_bush]

oh fyi, this doesn't help at lower speeds, but common lvds serdes nowadays hit upwards of 10Gbps, so this kind of thing makes a big difference at that point because the wavelength is small enough that the difference becomes possible to vary in the cabling.

basically for 1gbps its just starting, past 5gbps (10g copper spec calls for this though a working group is trying to run 10g on cat5 (boggle)) you need this kind of thing, and it happens to cut down on rf interference and reception, another handy thing, considering how hard it is to get some of these things to pass fcc (been there, done that).

Re:twisting

[lithium100]

Take a look at a CAT5 cable. There is practically no insulation at all so the dielectric permitivity would be hardly any better than air. Thats WHY they started twisting it so that heavy insulation wasn't needed as it is in coax.

Pity it's $250 for a peek

[darnok]

I'm curious to see what this document contains: whether it's an ITIL-like view of the world (e.g. a data centre runs on change management, capacity management, problem management, ...), a hardware based view (e.g. a data centre needs a raised floor to duct cables, air conditioning, secure access, racks, ...) or something else.

Just not curious enough to pay the price to find out

Alternatives to THIS book

[xmundt]

Greetings and Salutations.
          Interestingly enough, a quick google search for "data center design" comes up with more hits than one can shake a stick at, ranging from free to fairly inexpensive (under $100.00). I have to admit that I wonder if THIS magnum opus has anything in it that these OTHER resources do not cover.

          It never ceases to amaze me at the number of books out there that are supposed to be useful learning tools that are nothing more than a slightly changed rehash of the man pages for a given program.

          Regards
          Dave Mundt

Raised Floors?

[Anti-Trend]

I can't afford the $250 at present, but I wonder if they finally did away with raised floors. It wasn't too bad of idea around 40 years ago, but we've got cool modular racks now that make that concept moot, at least IMHO. Plus raised floors look weird, are fairly expensive to implement (especially for smaller firms with little cash), and get really nasty under there over time. Besides, telco has done without that design for quite a long time, seems to have worked out fine for them.

-AT

Re:Raised Floors?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

I wonder if they finally did away with raised floors.

At my colo, they run cold air from the HVAC under the raised floors and suck it up through the cabinets with a fans (and presure from the HVAC). They cool the cabinets, not the entire facility. It's odd being in a colo that is warm after freezing my ass off in previous facilities, but temperature monitering equipment of ours tells us that the closed cabinets stay quite cool.

Re:But of course

[frovingslosh]

Not sure about you, but if I was setting up a data center, I'd fork the $250. It'd probably be your smallest expense and is bound to have some good ideas in it.

Well that sure is an interesting comment. Just how many marks do you think that you can round up who would each pay $250 a pop for a 148 page report because it "is bound to have some good ideas in it"? At that price it wouldn't take too many people to convince me to crank out 150 pages of opnion, particular when the subject is as broad as "every single aspect of a data center". Maybe even sell it at the bargan price of $229.99 and undercut this report (but be close enough in price that some might think mine and the one discussed here are the same). And it wouldn't be like I was stealing their money, would it? It's bound to have some good ideas in it.

1 shoe does not fit all

[zenst]

Being unable to lash out and indeed darned if I woudl ever pay $250 for a datacentre for dummies kidna guide given that every case has to be treated on its own merets.

I wonder if they cover aspects like power phase balancing given alot of places have 3-phase and we all know how box's move about so the aspect of auditing the balancing across the 3 phases comes in. Why well power costs given you pay for the highest usage over the 3 and then there is the UPS aspects and resiliance aspects.

Oh and DR sites, if you have enough eggs for one basket then you need backup plans.

As you who work in the feild can imagine there are sooo many aspects that need to be looked at and whilst a guidline/crib sheet is always welcome no two datacenters are the same or some manufactuirer would be making a killing selling them in a box ;0.

The smallest deatil on one site becomes the largest priority on another. Hell i've even set up a site were we had critical servers spread across the area just to give that extra resiliance incase a train derailed and came thru, albeit remote possibility but still was a potential, and all before 9/11 which in itself shows the level of which murphy's law can stoop.

So whilst this type of thing is nice I do erk when people hold it up as a definitive guide as the only people fooled by that are those that dont know and highup managers and we all know a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Still its nice to have stuff like this as long as they are viewed in the context of guidlines and not guides in themselves.

I mean if all doctors were to follow a needle injection guidline of insert needle in left arm 13cm down from main index finger and on the horizontal plane of the wrist joint, not everybody would get the injection into a vien as we are all not exactly the same albiet similiar and indeed some people have no index finger nor left arm.

I personaly wish they would invest more time in a cable standard were the outer colouring deformed in relation to the number of times the cable is bent, now that would in itself be a much more useful input into datacenters in that they could pre-emptivly identify cable that is going past its shelf life or been over abused/used and liable to induce errors.

Re:Link to the document

[jrockway]

Sample scenario:

Hi, your datacenter isn't TIA-compliant. We won't sell you xyz hardware. We won't sell you xyz fire-suppression system.

Hi, I notice your datacenter doesn't have a fire-suppression system. I have to close it, by law, until it's installed.

Hi, I can't install a fire-suppression system until you bring the datacenter up to TIA-standards.

Needless to say, TIA doesn't have to make their spec law for it to be able to screw your datacenter over.