TE Connectivity offers new options for data centre designers

Data center designers face increasing restrictions on the flexibility of their infrastructure design because of the increasing speed and volume of data being transmitted across links in modern data centers. These increasing transmission speeds limit the number of connectors that can be included within a channel because of the inherent losses each connection point introduces into the transmission path. This, in turn, reduces infrastructure design options, which can compromise the agility of the data center in meeting user demands.

To improve agility, TE placed a cross-connect in the main distribution area, the horizontal distribution area and the equipment distribution area of the data center to form part of the design. This meant that a high-performance optical cabling and connectivity solution was required to support the resulting 10-connector channel as each extra interconnect would add extra loss which could quickly use up the losses allowed in the application loss budget.

To show how this agile design could be delivered, TE demonstrated a 100-metre, 10-connector channel composed of multiple sections of OM4 fiber-optic cable interconnected with TE’s MPOptimate high-performance, low-loss MPO system. Both 10 Gbps Ethernet and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel transmissions were successfully delivered over the same 100-metre link, with outstanding transmission characteristics as shown on the industry-standard eye-pattern diagram graphic. The eye pattern gives a visual representation of how clearly the data is ‘seen’ by the receiving equipment in the data center. The measured optical signal integrity through the 100-metre 10-connector channel was nearly identical to that of the original transceiver signal.

Willy Rietveld, head of the enterprise networks fiber optic group based at TE’s world class fiber laboratories in Den Bosch, Netherlands, comments“The secret to the success of the MPOptimate connector is based on the tight control of the fiber end face geometries and the high-precision polishing techniques used in the manufacturing process. This high level of connector performance gives data center owners more flexibility in designing an infrastructure to support an agile data center.”