Latin America. Consumers and businesses are driving exponential growth in data services, causing data center operators to look for new ways to deliver higher network speeds. Enterprise data centers must support existing applications, while setting the stage for new applications in the future. Until a few years ago 10-gigabit Ethernet was the 'high-speed' alternative, but today's Ethernet roadmap ranges from 25 and 50 gigabits to 100/200 gigabits, perhaps even 400 gigabits. Against this background, High Speed Migration (HSM) is a technology that helps networks transport more data, as well as allowing managers to protect their networks in the future, providing them with the operational guarantees they require.
Why HSM?
Traffic patterns in data centers have changed. The demand for higher speed has grown and infrastructure that has been compatible with applications in the past will not be adequate to support future applications.
"In the past delivering content or services on the basis of best effort was fine, but nowadays time is critical. Today, stockbrokers, for example, must give immediate responses; in education and medicine, instantaneous, reliable, ultra-low-latency data networks are also needed," said Jodi Gunnufso, Program Manager CCS Strategic Program Group at CommScope.
Data has become the new currency and with real-time applications driving the need for lower latency, a well-managed data center becomes a competitive advantage. Data center managers whose previous role was simply to keep things running are now in charge of delivering higher throughput and lower latency to keep the business competitive.
"Data center managers need to know that their infrastructures must be able to handle large amounts of data, while being efficient to migrate at high speeds," added Sergio Uribe. "Our job is to help identify, design and build data centers that are ready now and for the future, so during BICSI Andino we wanted to show attendees our innovations and solutions for their network infrastructure."
HSM describes the data center network as it evolves toward higher performance and higher capacity, taking a new approach to infrastructure design that looks to the future of high-speed fiber optics that has yet to be deployed in data centers. The challenge for data center managers is that they must make decisions about current changes that will support different types of fiber, protocols, and reach distances in the future. They must migrate to an infrastructure that is flexible enough to adapt, while keeping costs under control.
In this regard, Jodi Gunnufson plans some key strategies to deal with MSM:
1. Understand the options, where and to what extent you want to go: A good understanding of the distances and types of fiber being used, how far you will need to go, and how much bandwidth you will need to go with is necessary. Until a few years ago, 40G was considered 'high speed', however, today that technology has been quickly replaced by 100G optical fiber. "Some of the questions that can be asked are: Can I go with a point-to-point cable, or do I need reconfiguration and test points? What kind of capacity do I need and what is the growth curve I should expect? What speeds should I plan for 25G, 40G or 50G, what about 100G or 400G?" said the Program Manager for CommScope's CCS Strategic Program Group.
2. Have the ability to manage current and future infrastructure: Having an infrastructure management tool (AIM) can provide a clear picture of your infrastructure and help you understand capabilities and pain points. This makes it easier to make informed decisions and respond quickly to outages, so you have a healthier and more manageable infrastructure in the long run.
3. Plan for flexibility: Making a design that has the option to use 8-, 12-, or 24-fiber packages to adjust the size of the infrastructure every step of the way to higher bandwidth is ideal for optimizing the use of your fiber infrastructure while maintaining 100% utilization. Your design should be compatible with various types of fiber and growth strategies that match your future applications, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
4. Incorporate modularity: "Choose panels that can accept a variety of fiber modules, so that as the data center grows, it will have a common housing and technicians can simply swap modules to move to a faster data rate," added Jodi Gunnufson. "Ideally, the wiring and housings are deployed only once, and it's the endpoints that need to be changed to move to faster speeds."
5. Know your cost structure: Measuring costs and benefits of various options, and then making the best decision of the type of fiber and connectivity solutions that adapt to the objectives in a cost-effective way is of utmost importance.
6. Know the right time for migration: The data center will need to migrate at higher speeds sooner than you can imagine, so choosing a route and provider that can help you will be vitally important. With new real-time services demanding greater data center capacity, your HSM path must be ready to respond to the needs required by optical network applications.
"An HSM path is inevitable for all large organizations, but it should not be a painful, let alone costly, process. At CommScope we have an HSM platform, which is a complete portfolio of products that support higher speed connectivity in the data center, with maximum configuration flexibility; and includes interchangeable 8-, 12- and 24-fiber MPO modules, ultra-low-loss single-mode and multi-mode fiber, and OM5 broadband multimode fiber, which enables duplex transmission of 100G or more over long distances. If you take these strategies into account, your data center will become a flexible and cost-effective platform for real-time computing that will fuel competitive advantage in this digital age," concluded Jodi Gunnufso, Program Manager CCS Strategic Program Group at CommScope.
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