Networks Ireland Issue 1 December 2014

Issue 1 December 2014

Case Study

Feature

Case Study

Tapping The Power Of Wireless

Updating The Royal Dublin Society

Optical Fibre Cabling Futures In The Spotlight

The Dedicated Title for the Irish Network and Data Communications Industry

FUTURE PROOF YOUR DATA CENTER Future Proof Your Data Center for Performance, Availability and Flexibility www.te.com/bns

bnsapacmarketing@te.com

Contact Darren Walsh Mobile: +353 (0)87 9890390 Email: darren@temple.ie Web: www.temple.ie

CONTENTS

Tapping The Power Of Wireless

Evolving The Data Centre

14

Could New Innovations Stunt Fibre’s Growth?

24

8

REGULARS News

5

BETTER BUSINESS Understanding cloud disaster recovery services 34 Peter Godden looks at how virtualisation is helping organisations strengthen their disaster recovery positions.

CASE STUDIES Tapping The Power Of Wireless 8 How Lancom Systems helped one of Dublin’s major hotels embrace wireless...

How A Dublin College Campus Installed WiFi Campus-wide wireless technology can be trickier to implement than you might think...

12

Updating The Royal Dublin Society Rebasoft helps Royal Dublin Society increase visibility and deliver an improved service to delegates...

18

The Power Of Schneider Electric Revealed Schneider Electric, the power (and cooling) behind Dell Solution Centres

28

Using OpenStack In An All-IP Environment 42 Axel Clauberg explains how OpenStack has been the key to a new all-IP triple play network offering...

Enhancing Cloud Interconnectivity Outsourcery discusses the challenges with cloud connectivity CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE RiT Technologies Discusses The Upcoming AIM Standard... xxxxxxxxxx

e-space North Business Centre 181 Wisbech Rd, Littleport, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 1RA Tel: +44 (0)1353 865403 info@networksireland.com www.networksireland.com

Are modular data centres the Lego of IT? 38

DATA CENTRES Evolving The Data Centre 14 COLT explains how data centres must evolve to cope with future business needs The Perils Of Ignoring Load Testing Dave Wolfenden explains the benefits of load testing in modern data centres...

32

Are modular data centres the Lego of IT? Matt Goulding discusses the industry shift toward modular data centres

38

NETWORKS Overcoming The Fibre Challenge Shayan Sanyal discusses the fibre changes taking place in the national infrastructure...

Could New Innovations Stunt Fibre’s Growth?

Frank Kaufhold explains why there is life left in copper technology...

20

24

IT SYSTEMS Converged Building Infrastructure: It’s a Journey, Not a Destination 48 xxxxx

46

OPINION Optical Fibre Cabling Futures In The Spotlight Mike Gilmore looks at the evolution of fibre optic cabling...

50

30

STRUCTURED CABLING Too Much Cabling Choice Can Be A Bad Thing Ken Hodge explains the nuances of structured cabling system choices...

52

LGN Media, a subsidiary of The Lead Generation Network Ltd Publisher & Managing Director: Ian Titchener Editor: Steve Gold Production Manager: Rachel Titchener Creative Director Andy Beavis Financial Controller: Annie Callow The views expressed in the articles and technical papers are those of the authors and are not endorsed by the publishers.

The author and publisher, and its officers and employees, do not accept any liability for any errors that may have occurred, or for any reliance on their contents.

All trademarks and brandnames are respected within our publication. However, the publishers accept no responsibility for any inadvertent misuse that may occur.

This publication is protected by copyright © 2014 and accordingly must not be reproduced in any medium. All rights reserved.

Networks Ireland stories, news, know-how?

Please submit to steve@lgnmedia.co.uk

NETWORKS IRELAND 3

FOREWARD

The need for speed has never been greater…

Despite the fact that the Republic of Ireland has a population of 4.8 million people, it is clear that Ireland is a disconnected society. Large numbers of people have little or no connection to the Internet.

While the minister responsible, Pat Rabbitte, has said that broadband was as important to rural Ireland as electricity was in the last century, Ireland is still at the bottom of international tables.

According to Ookla’s household download index, Ireland’s average Internet speed ranks 43rd internationally, behind Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria.

The telecoms regulator, Comreg, reported in 2012 that the Republic still has around 16,000 internet users on dial-up. A third of internet subscriptions are mobile broadband, which is expensive, of variable quality and synonymous with small data caps.

Eircom, meanwhile, says that six per cent of the population can’t get a DSL connection. That’s 274,000 people reliant on mobile, satellite, or fixed-wireless services.

Even for those who have a DSL service, our patchwork broadband infrastructure means the speeds frequently make the service unusable.

So why worry?

Well, a recent World Bank study of 120 countries found that for every 10-percentage-point increase in the penetration of broadband there is an increase of 1.3 percentage points in economic growth.

If you lie beyond the reach of Eircom’s fibre network, you have three options: mobile broadband, fixed wireless broadband, or satellite broadband.

All are expensive or limited in functionality. Things have to change – and they have to change quickly in Ireland…

May all your problems be little ones.

Steve Gold, Editor, Networks Ireland

4 NETWORKS IRELAND

NEWS

Hibernia ups its Dublin game

G

lobal telecoms service provider Hibernia Networks has announced that it will host a new Point of Presence in TelecityGroup’s Dublin based Northwest Business Park data centre.

While meeting the ever-growing need for Hibernia’s services, the PoP will provide TelecityGroup’s customers access to Hibernia’s global network, Project Kelvin, an extensive submarine and terrestrial cable deployment that directly connects Northern Ireland with North America and Europe.

The agreement marks Hibernia’s fourth PoP in Dublin and third in TelecityGroup’s Dublin data centres.

As the number of web-centric businesses in need of secure and diverse connectivity in and through Dublin continues to grow, Hibernia’s new presence in Northwest Business Park is designed to meet ever-increasing customer demand for its services.

Hibernia will deliver optical transport and IP Transit services through the new PoP, increasing the peering and connectivity options available at the facility, which is also Ireland’s Internet Neutral Exchange (INEX) facility.

Plans call for the POP to provide TelecityGroup’s customers with access to Hibernia’s Project Kelvin network, an extensive submarine and terrestrial cable deployment that directly connects Northern Ireland with North America and

Europe. It will also provide access to the Project Express transatlantic cable system offering high capacity, diverse and low latency connectivity from September 2015.

Fergus Innes, Regional Vice President of Europe, Hibernia Networks said that his firm’s commitment to delivering premium, high speed connectivity and services throughout Ireland means that it is constantly looking for ways to expand our connectivity options.

“The addition of this PoP will improve our service and allow regional businesses to meet the recent increase in demand for data transport and extend their existing footprints. We also have PoPs with TelecityGroup in the UK and Germany, so have first-hand knowledge of the excellent data centre facilities the company provides,” he said.

Maurice Mortell, TelecityGroup Vice President Developing Markets and Managing Director Ireland comments: “With demand for telecommunications services continuing to grow, the ability to offer high quality, flexible and secure connectivity is more important than ever.

“The implementation of an additional Hibernia core PoP in Dublin underscores the unrivalled connectivity options that TelecityGroup provides for businesses located in Ireland,” he explained www.hibernianetworks.com.

Excel intros desktop PDUs

E

xcel Networking Solutions, the copper, optical cabling and rack solutions provider, has launched a new range of desktop power distribution units.

The latest addition to the Excel range is designed to add greater accessibility to the work place as it presents both power and network ports in a compact and stylish design that sits on the edge of the desk, removing the need to scramble underneath to charge and power phones, tablets and laptops.

According to the company, the stylish anodised aluminium desktop PDUs are easily fitted to the desktop with clamps supplied and are available with UK or Schuko Power Sockets, along with options for 6c apertures to accept data outlets and USB power. The USB outlets on the units supply up to 2.1 amps permitting phones or tablets to be charged.

Announcing the new PDUs, Tracey Calcutt, the firm’s marketing manager said that the idea to add these products to the range actually came from a suggestion from one of our Excel Partners at a previous partner briefing.

“We are always keen to get feedback and ideas from our partners and particularly where they think we have a gap in the range,” she said, adding that the desktop PDUs complement the company’s existing PDU range, as well as adding another potential revenue stream for Excel’s partners.

Eason adopts TNSPay technology

E

ason, Ireland’s leading retailer of books, stationery, magazines, cards and much more, has chosen the TNSPay gateway from Transaction Network Services (TNS) to handle payment transactions made across its store network and online portal.

The agreement, which cements Eason’s omni-channel approach, will enable Eason to offer its customers a faster, more reliable checkout experience while simplifying the company’s payment infrastructure with one secure, cost effective and feature-rich payment processing solution.

TNSPay will be deployed by Eason across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to manage the millions of transactions made each year by its customers.

Niall Gaffey, group financial controller with Eason, said: “We identified the need to strengthen the way we handled payments and selected TNSPay based on its extensive global reach, breadth of features and ability to bring together our offline and online transactions into one easy to manage platform.”

“Another factor which was crucial was TNSPay’s flexibility and scalability. It is essential that our payments infrastructure can withstand the pressures of high volumes of traffic, particularly at peak times of the year, such as Christmas, and TNSPay has a proven track record with round the clock support,” he said,” Fintan Byrne, executive vice president and managing director of TNS’ Payment Gateway Solutions, said: “We’re delighted to be providing Eason with our omni-channel enhancing TNSPay solution. Eason, like a significant number of other retailers, is recognising the benefits of bringing together their multiple customer channels under one omni-channel strategy which streamlines back office functions in a cohesive, efficient and cost-effective manner.”

“We’re also excited to be helping Eason introduce new functionality, such as contactless payments. This functionality gives customers more choices in how they make payment transactions in-store as well as supports new digital wallet technology for online shoppers,” he explained” www.tnspay.com

www.excel-networking.com

NETWORKS IRELAND 5

NEWS

LHR gets the Fujitsu touch

F

ujitsu has announced the completion of its £34m network infrastructure project for Heathrow Terminal 2.

The four year partnership, which has seen Fujitsu implement the entire terminal’s integrated network system, providing the backbone which supports the terminals key systems that collectively help towards reducing queuing time and connecting passengers and employees throughout the terminal.

According to the company, the project has been beneficial to both employees and passengers. Employees can now work more collaboratively with the use of WiFi helping operational staff to receive information in real time, something that wasn’t possible before. This enables better communications and improved travel services across the terminal.

Passengers, meanwhile, can expect to see queuing time for check-in, baggage and security fall as the new technology allows passengers to check-in at any desk, instead of a desk designated to a specific airline.

The Fujitsu implemented infrastructure will also support key systems including security, airport operation and building management systems, self-check-in and bag drop systems.

Fujitsu says that its success with the project has opened the door for other contracts at Heathrow. The company was also recently awarded the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for private mobile radio (PMR) and Cellular projects across Heathrow.

This means that Fujitsu will provide all radio and cellular requirements for the airport for the next two years. www.fujitsu.com

LINX selects Digital Realty

L

INX selects Digital Realty as its first City POP in more than six years Digital Realty Trust has announced that the London Internet Exchange (LINX) will be establishing a full Point of Presence (POP) in support of running its dual LAN infrastructure from Digital Realty’s Chessington data centre.

The Chessington facility is already home to a large community of cloud service providers and content delivery networks, a significant proportion of whom value the level of traffic optimisation afforded by an indigenous Internet Exchange.

LINX connects over 550 ASNs from 61 countries around the world, enabling more reliable exchange of Internet traffic, increased routing control and improved performance.

Through LINX the members are able to reach 85 per cent of the total global Internet, making it the most connected Internet Exchange Point in the world. High quality data centres are critical to LINX’s on-going reliability, as they house the equipment, which LINX uses to operate the network upon which its members depend. www.linx.net

Softwerx and Databarracks provide cloud backup and recovery

C

loud service providers Softwerx and Databarracks have joined forces to a range of award-winning backup and disaster recovery services to the UK market.

Commenting on the partnership, David Smart, Softwerx’ managing director, said that the backup and disaster recovery market has changed a lot in the last few years. “It’s not about selling an organisation an expensive set of hardware and leaving them to it anymore - it’s about providing a reliable and scalable service, and managing that service seamlessly,” he explained.

Smart went on to say that that is one of the reasons that working with Databarracks was an easy choice, as the firm has been providing business

continuity services for over a decade - they understand how the market is changing, and they’re growing with it.

“They have technicians available 24/7 and their flexible approach to pricing means organisations can scale their service up and down, only ever paying for what they actually use,” he explained.

Peter Groucutt, Databarrack’s managing director, said that he is pleased to be partnering with Softwerx.

“Like us, they are certified by the Cloud Industry Forum and are ISO 9001 plus 27001 accredited, so they appreciate how important security is when proving cloud services,” he said. www.databarracks.com www.softwerx.com

Nimans boxes clever

N

imans’ has strengthened its ‘Everything Connected’ reseller strategy by launching a cost effective range of data infrastructure cabling that’s high on value and performance - and proving an instant market success.

The own brand Titan Cat 5e and Cat 6 solid copper cabling are supplied in easy to use ‘pull style’ boxes of 305m - backed by a 25-year warranty .Cat5e is available in PVC and ‘low smoke’ options and the more resellers buy the more they save, from a box to a pallet, with prices available from £34.50 including free delivery.

“Since its launch several months ago demand has gone crazy, exceeding all expectations,” said Nimans’ head of category sales,

6 NETWORKS IRELAND

Paul Burn. “The exceptional price and quality has resulted in Titan cabling literally flying off the shelves in a huge success story. We’ve been overwhelmed by orders.”

“Titan cabling provides resellers with a competitive market advantage. They come with price breaks so the more they buy the cheaper they become. The cables are manufactured to the highest standards and provide exceptional transmission performance, as illustrated by the 25-year guarantee and official certification status,” he explained. www.nimans.net

Europe’s leading manufacturer of Datacentre Enclosure Systems We offer unrivalled flexibility whilst quality and value for money are guaranteed.

Orion is a leading manufacturer of rack cabinets, server racks and external enclosures. Most of the industry standard racking and enclosure storage products are covered by our existing product range, however, we understand there are always companies with specific requirements, so at Orion, we specialise in manufacturing custom cabinets and bespoke solutions to meet your needs.

+44 113 2320555 www.rackcabinets.co.uk sales@ orionuk.biz

CASESTUDY

How Dublin’s Ashling Hotel embraced wireless

Tapping The Power Of

Wireless

How Lancom Systems helped one of Dublin’s major hotels embrace wireless...

infoburst The hotel foyer revealed...

8 NETWORKS IRELAND

CASESTUDY

Challenges Wireless technology in an office environment is one thing, but the unpredictability of meeting the wireless needs of staff and guests in a modern Dublin hotel are an entirely different ballgame.

The 4-star Ashling Hotel is located at the heart of the historic centre in Dublin. With 225 bedrooms, a restaurant, bar and conference rooms, the hotel offers a high level of service to leisure and business travellers. A modern WLAN hotspot provides greater convenience and mobility for all concerned.

Guest wishes “Our WLAN satisfies all of the wishes of our guests in terms of coverage and performance,” says Alan Moody, general manager of the Ashling Hotel.

Various requirements had to be met to achieve this, he adds.

“The old access points (APs) were replaced with new, state-of-the-art equipment in elegant white housing from the WLAN specialists LANCOM Systems, and we added more APs as well,” says Jimmy Byrne, technical solution Manager at Wood Communications.

“We also implemented a more powerful Internet connection,” he explained.

Dual-band access points were deployed in the conference rooms, which can transmit in the 2.4 GHz and in the more powerful 5-GHz frequency bands at the same time. Conference attendees with client devices capable of 5 GHz are then guided to the correct frequency band, which is the result of an integrated technology called band steering.

“This makes us ready for the future and, at the same time, it reduces the load on the 2.4 GHz frequency band,” says Byrne.

Security The subject of security is very close to the hotel managers’ hearts.

“We wanted a strict separation of the employee and guest WLANs,” says Sean McAlinden, Director of Netplex Limited.

The system integrator set up logically separate subnets to implement this, one for the hotel staff and one for the guests. Virtual local area networks, or VLANs, strictly separate the communications on the subnets, even though they use the same physical network components.

Additional security comes with the firewall integrated into the WLAN controller, which at the same time provides centralized management of the WLAN. “The result is a secure, high-performance and easy-to-manage WLAN”, says general manager Alan Moody, who added that the hotel’s guests appreciate this too. “The feedback on the free service is consistently positive,” he explained.

Lancom Customer: Ashling Hotel Dublin Location: Dublin, Ireland Contact: info@ashlinghotel.ie Website: www.ashlinghotel.ie Products and services: 4 Star Hotel located in the heart of historic Dublin City with 225 bedrooms, restaurant, bar and meeting room facilities.

Requirements 1 Extend the range and performance of the existing WLAN 1 Integrate the 5-GHz radio band for hotel guests 1 Simultaneous use of the WLAN by staff and guests Components used: 1 72 x LANCOM L-320agn access point 1 3 x LANCOM L-460agn dual-radio access points 1 1 x LANCOM WLC 4100 WLAN controller 1 1 x LANCOM Public Spot option System integrator Netplex Limited in partnership with Wood Communications Website: www.woodcomm.ie, Contact: sales@woodcomm.ie Website: www.netplex.ie, Contact: info@netplex.ie

New leading edge technology Lancom Systems recently launched a highly integrated wireless infrastructure solution for brickand-mortar retail solution jointly developed with imagotag that supports classic WLAN, electronic shelf labels, and location-based services on a single platform The solution - which was jointly developed with imagotag - supports classic WLAN, electronic shelf labels, and location-based services on a single platform. The end result is a highly integrated wireless infrastructure solution for brickand-mortar retail Brick-and-mortar retail is going through rapid change. Modern radio-based applications, such as electronic shelf labels and location-based services for smartphone users, are optimising in-store processes and laying the foundations for new business models and shopping experiences.

Lancom Systems is claiming a first mover technology that integrates the different radio technologies into a single infrastructure platform.

The new E-series access points support classic WLAN, electronic shelf labels (ESL) and iBeacons.

The benefits include lower costs, longer service life of the electronic shelf labels, and a high degree of sustainability. The technology is thanks to the close cooperation with the Austrian ESL specialist imagotag, the developer of the wireless technology for label control.

The electronic price displays are one of the top trends in retail. According to a recent retail survey, the worldwide market for electronic shelf labels (ESL) is set to grow by an average of 18 per cent annually until the year 2018.

NETWORKS IRELAND 9

CASESTUDY

infoburst Wireless access - even whilst you east...

In Germany, too, retailers are increasingly adopting ESL. Large retailers are already gathering their first experience with electronic goods labels and price tags.

A particularly energy-saving radio technology that controls the electronic price labels ensures that the battery-powered displays have a long service life. Until now, operating these systems required the costly installation and operation of a dedicated infrastructure.

Compounding the problem was the interference with existing wireless LAN infrastructures, since both of these technologies operate in the same frequency band (2.4 GHz).

Wireless LAN is very widespread in brick-andmortar retail. Uses include wireless stocktaking or the provision of fast Internet access to customers.

Lower costs Lancom has fine-tuned the two wireless technologies to provide interference-free parallel operation in close cooperation with ESL specialist imagotag, developer of the wireless solution for controlling the electronic shelf labels and supplier of the ESLs. Retailers benefit from a lower up-front investment, low operating costs, and a long service life of the battery-powered price tags that operate in parallel to the wireless LAN. Along with wireless LAN and ESL, the new LANCOM E-series access points support a third wireless technology. The integration of iBeacons enables retailers and operators of shopping malls to implement innovative location-based services, including: Location-dependent push marketing: customers in the vicinity receive special offers via app-based push messages on their smartphones.

Indoor navigation: radio-controlled localization in combination with an app- or Webbased floor plan conveniently guides customers to the desired offers or shop.

10 NETWORKS IRELAND

Business intelligence: analysis of customer walk paths helps to optimise the layout of the sales floor.

Christian Schallenberg, a member of the management board with Lancom Systems: “I am convinced that electronic shelf labels and location-based services offer enormous potential for the retail sector.”

“Just think about dynamic pricing or improved customer communications. Even today, projects like this frequently fail because of the costs or the technical hurdles. By integrating the ESL and iBeacon technologies in a single professional WLAN infrastructure, the retail sector has the unique opportunity to present themselves as innovative and quick to respond to trends, quite apart from entering into a whole new form of customer dialog. And all of this in a cost-effective, efficient and low-maintenance package,” he explained.

Michael Moosburger, founder and managing director of imagotag, agrees about the enormous potential for this solution.

“Electronic price displays are the major future trend in retail. By combining our ESL technology with wireless LAN and iBeacons, we have jointly created a unique infrastructure solution, which offers completely new possibilities of flexible pricing and customer loyalty to the brick-andmortar retail sector.”

About Lancom Systems Lancom Systems is the leading German manufacturer of reliable, innovative network solutions for business customers.

The company’s two business units, VPN Network Connectivity and Wireless LAN, offer professional users secure, flexible infrastructure solutions for local-area and multi-site networks.

The entire core product range is developed and manufactured in Germany. In addition, LANCOM also provides VPN solutions certified by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) for the protection of particularly sensitive networks and critical infrastructures (EPCIP) against cyber attacks.

The company’s headquarters is in Würselen near Aachen, Germany, and other offices are located throughout Europe. Customers include small and medium-sized enterprises, government agencies, institutions, and major corporations from Germany, Europe and increasingly worldwide. The enterprise is a partner in the Alliance for Cyber Security initiated by the BSI. www.lancom.eu

enclosures

enclosures

committed to better

CASESTUDY

St. Columba’s College, Dublin, Ireland

How A Dublin College Campus

Installed WiFi

Campus-wide wireless technology can be trickier to implement than you might think...

Analysis The College has some of the finest buildings and largest grounds of any secondary school in Ireland. The school required to network their new and existing computers across the campus for academic staff and pupils. The installation of regular network cable was simply not an option as many of the buildings are over 200 years old with walls over three foot thick in places.

infoburst Old buildings...

Implementation Ireland currently has few broadband options for Internet connectivity and VBNETS installed a two-way broadband satellite Internet system from Educom.

This provides connectivity at speeds up to 2 Mbps - the fastest available in any school in Ireland. Visitor Based Networks installed a large wireless network utilising the advanced Buffalo Airstation Pro line of 802.11b wireless equipment with 11mbps speeds. To distribute the network across the College a series of discreet antennas pick up the signal and repeat it across campus allowing for seamless roaming.

Data, files, email, Internet information, class reports, print documents, video, audio and general communications can travel across the

Make

network at high speed internally or via the satellite connection onto the Internet.

The Buffalo Airstation range was selected

by Visitor Based Networks as it had the widest range of integrated parts required to complete such a complex network in buildings that are very challenging for wireless networks.

Data, files, email, Internet information, class reports, print documents, video, audio and general communications can travel across the network at high speed internally or via the satellite connection onto the Internet. It was also possible to link a number of the staff houses on site into the high-speed Internet satellite using the Buffalo high performance antennas and cards.

Evaluation The network provides a very cost effective option for the College to enhance the quality of their staff and students academic experience.

The staff can move from classroom to classroom with portable computers and maintain a constant connection with other staff and educational resources.

No cables are required which enables very quick set up of temporary computer facilities for staff and students. Data, files, email, Internet information, class reports, print documents, video,

easy.

RiMatrix S: The first mass-produced data centre.

Simply plug in and it’s ready to use.

12 NETWORKS IRELAND

CASESTUDY audio and general communications can travel across the network at high speed internally or via the satellite connection onto the Internet.

Airstation The Buffalo Airstation range was selected by Visitor Based Networks as it had the widest range of integrated parts required to complete such a complex network in buildings that are very challenging for wireless networks. Older computer equipment can now be utilised on the network by adding wireless cards or wireless USB units.

The Buffalo Airstation range was selected

by Visitor Based Networks as it had the widest range of integrated parts required to complete such a complex network in buildings that are very challenging for wireless networks. Older computer equipment can now be utilised on the network by adding wireless cards or wireless USB units.

The Science and IT departments worked together to specify a trial wireless network within the Science laboratories for staff to determine if the technology would scale across the campus.

A simple network with 6 Toshiba laptops and a server operated well.

The school itself required a system that is/was: • Usable not only for student class work, but also for teacher and staff use.

• Cost-effective • Highly-reliable • Easily maintained • Inexpensive.

• With impact Commenting on the new wireless network, Dr. Dan Griffiths of St. Columba’s said: “In the castle and conference areas, all we had was a standalone PC and printer with a couple of ISDN lines.

People booking conferences kept asking if there was broadband access.

Equipment used included the Buffalo Airstation Pro access points, cables, pigtails, Pro Yagi Antennas, Pro Omni Antennas, Buffalo indoor omni, Buffalo indoor directional, Buffalo cards and USB units.

infoburst and new get the benefit of WiFi...

About St Columba’s College St Columba’s College is one of Ireland’s leading secondary schools, specialising in providing a high-quality boarding education for its pupils.

Situated conveniently close to the city and the airport, we are a seven-day boarding and day school for boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 18. Founded in 1843, the College occupies nearly 150 acres in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains overlooking Dublin Bay. You can find out more about the College on our welcome page, media gallery and admissions section. Our Quick Facts page will give you a good overview of the College while our A-Z Sitemap offers links to all areas of the website. www.buffalo-technology.com

NETWORKS IRELAND 13

RITTAL Ltd, Barrowside Business Park, Sleaty Road, Graiguecullen, Carlow. Phone +353 (0)599182100

DATACENTRES

infoburst Taking care of all aspects of the data centre...

14 NETWORKS IRELAND

Moulding the data centre to meet future needs

DATACENTRES

Evolving The Data Centre Introduction A recent European study suggests a significant gap between business needs and the technology to support them. The report provides insight into factors influencing the decision-making process around how to manage critical data.

Tech deficit There is growing evidence that a substantial gap has developed between what businesses would like to achieve and what their IT infrastructure can support. Businesses want to strike the right balance between increasing profitability, responding to changing customer needs and preparing for tomorrow.

IT departments everywhere are under considerable pressure to create the right level of IT infrastructure to achieve this balance and the research suggests it is proving to be a significant challenge for European businesses of all sizes.

The question is, how do you meet today’s daily operational demands and also adapt to future business requirements while restricted by limited resources and static budgets?

Many of those surveyed believe the answer is not a simple one. They are discovering a gap between the services the IT department are capable of supporting and the services which customers are demanding from the business. This ‘gap’ or tech deficit becomes an even greater risk when additional demands are placed on a technology infrastructure supported by static budgets and business approaches.

Survey Colt recently commissioned research based on the responses of 852 technology decisions makers throughout Europe to assess how European organisations are supporting their business, and in particular, how ready their technology infrastructure is to support future ambitions.

The report confirmed the existence of this ‘tech deficit’, how it is affecting the industry and what steps are available for IT decision makers to address the challenges it presents.

The data centre is a crucial part of any IT estate, presenting both opportunities and

challenges for IT to help the business achieve strategic objectives and meet security, reliability and regulatory requirements. The research provided some interesting insights into the current state of data centre infrastructure for European businesses.

Data centre providers are felt to be an important business partner by 19% of European businesses and 26 per cent of those surveyed believe the Tech Deficit resides in their data centre infrastructure, indicating that this critical business asset is in danger of not meeting current and future needs.

Rising costs, compromised security, inability to meet regulatory mandates, downtime, data loss, power breaks and lengthy recovery times could have huge operational and reputational implications for any business. Businesses need to be able to confidently mitigate these risks while managing costs and aligning data centre strategy to their needs.

Businesses always want their data centres to be secure, reliable and resilient. What they are really looking for however, is data centre infrastructure that can respond to evolving business needs around energy efficiency, risk mitigation and the smooth flow of data between technologies and locations.

Data centres with strategies to support this, backed up by a local team, can evolve into a powerful business asset.

Factors influencing change 40 per cent of those surveyed feel cost pressure is the biggest factor forcing structural change – this is even more significant with IT budgets remaining static.

This cost factor suggests Capex investments are no longer feasible, and flexible alternatives with lower cost implications which can also be implemented quickly are now the preferred method of responding to changing business needs.

There is a growing preference for controlling costs via initially small contracts that allow for growth and scale when it is required. The focus now is on how budgets are spent, and services such as colocation, offering variable terms, are becoming more popular.

NETWORKS IRELAND 15

DATACENTRES

34 per cent of those surveyed believe data centre security is having the biggest impact on their infrastructure - working with trusted partners and developing a strong understanding of data centre security considerations needs to be a priority. Multiple layers of security and disaster recovery options will help customers feel comfortable that their data is secure and accessible.

Own less 52 per cent of all businesses intend to adopt data centre colocation by 2016, indicating that colocation and the cost and agility benefits that come with it, can play a significant role in meeting future data centre needs. Designing, building and operating a private data centre is costly, time consuming and complex. With many businesses refocussing on their core business it makes sense to outsource their data centre requirements. A trusted provider can meet both shorter and longer term requirements without the need for significant upfront investment, while also supporting growth and future strategy.

A good offensive strategy against the tech deficit would see the data centre estate incorporating the flexibility that comes with colocation. Colocation makes space, power and location available as needed. It is engineered to be simple, deploys advanced technology and reduces the risks that come with long term planning and over or under provisioning - helping businesses of all sizes act faster on opportunities arising from the digital economy.

Flexibility in data centre business models, delivery and commercials will become increasingly important, with 7 out of 10 businesses attributing their tech deficit to infrastructure that it is not ready to deliver flexible services to meet future business needs. If a partner has this flexibility, they can adapt to the business needs and become a genuine strategic asset. Simplicity is about data centre options that safeguard the data, come with value-added features and are easier to manage.

Options that allow the business to scale when needed and don’t hold it back with non-flexible long term contracts.

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infoburst Careful planning is behind a professional data centre...

Introducing simplicity and flexibility into the current infrastructure gives the IT department greater control of costs and choices, allowing it to meet current demands on budget and plan for a future that does not involve spiralling costs.

Good underlying infrastructure meets critical daily operational requirements while creating a platform for continuous IT. Strong data centre services and network can support the delivery of services that are flexible enough to respond to demand and market trends.

Acquiring a partner who understands the intricate relationship between infrastructure, data centre services and data security can make a huge difference. The right partner is not someone who sells things but one who is willing to create a deep relationship based on shared ideas, business outcomes and mutual understanding.

Good data centre partners deliver the flexible solutions customers need today and can advise on industry best practices. Partners with presence in multiple countries and regions can also bring local expertise to the table and provide crucial guidance on country-specific regulatory and compliance issues.

The future The tech deficit won’t go away. 9 in 10 IT decision makers believe their data centre infrastructure requires some level of evolution over the next two years to keep up with business demands.

A measured response is required. One which best delivers on business outcomes and results with an underlying infrastructure which is simplified, flexible and responsive. Those who act now by making strong decisions around data centre solutions which are aligned to business outcomes can avoid the negative impacts of the deficit and end up capitalising on opportunities, while the competition are occupied.

About COLT Colt is the information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated network, data centre, voice and IT services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers worldwide. Colt operates in 23 European countries with a 46,960km European network and transatlantic network capacity. Colt has metropolitan area networks in 42 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 20,065 buildings and 20 carrier neutral Colt data centres.

In addition to its direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Operator which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers. www.colt.net

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CASESTUDY

Rebasoft powers the WiFi at The RDS

Updating

The Royal Dublin Society

Rebasoft helps Royal Dublin Society increase visibility and deliver an improved service to delegates...

Introduction Customer Name: The Royal Dublin Society Industry: Local, Leisure Number of Employees: 300+ The challenge The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) has provided venues for various events in Ireland including sporting, concerts and conferences since being established in 1820.

To service this, The RDS has undergone a substantial network upgrade including high density wireless to ensure service delivery to its attendees, spectators and exhibitors.

A maintained level of service is required to ensure a high standard is continually delivered by the Society.

Considering the dynamic environment, RDS found Rebasoft simple to install and were quickly able to start using the information gathered to optimise their infrastructure and provide valuable information into size and scope of requirements for events. This meant that they were in a better position to ensure delivery of capacity to the right places at the right time.

Rebasoft also provides the capability to harness the information provided from their Juniper devices to measure not only bandwidth utilisation, connectivity reporting and traffic forensics but also use real-time response metrics to describe the performance of the systems from the user’s perspective.

Impact Rebasoft’s Application Auditor and Auditor Core products have helped RDS, our client was able to: •

Provide visibility into connectivity for Exhibitor, Spectators & Event Attendees • Understand detailed bandwidth requirements and traffic types being utilised • Optimise deployed infrastructure, ensuring optimal design and demonstrating time and cost savings Rebasoft’s Application Auditor and Auditor Core products have helped RDS, to:

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• • •

Provide visibility into connectivity for exhibitor, spectators and event attendees Understand detailed bandwidth requirements and traffic types being utilised Optimise deployed infrastructure, ensuring optimal design and demonstrating time and cost saving

The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) has provided venues for various events in Ireland including sporting, concerts and conferences since being established in 1820. To service this, The RDS has undergone a substantial network upgrade including high density wireless to ensure service delivery to its attendees, spectators and exhibitors.

A maintained level of service is required to ensure a high standard is continually delivered by the Society.

The Royal Dublin Society found Rebasoft simple to install and were quickly able to start using the information gathered to optimise their infrastructure and provide valuable information into size and scope of requirements for events

infoburst The power of WiFi in your hand...

CASESTUDY

About Rebasoft Rebasoft deliver a modern 21st century approach to monitor and control the whole of your network, protecting your business from an ever growing Cyber Threat, whilst better managing and delivering operational efficiencies.

Based on best practice, customer feedback and business needs, we deliver out-of-the-box functionality that delivers real benefits. Fast.

Providing real time visibility across new and legacy systems of all connected devices and associated traffic, this insight will at last put you in control, resulting in significant cost benefits and a robust security platform.

Today’s networks are dynamic, changing rapidly as businesses strive to maintain a competitive advantage. Sophisticated users demand access to the corporate network from anywhere and from any device.

This has made networks more vulnerable and difficult to manage. Traditional infrastructure products provide point products that collect and analyse data from individual or proprietary data sources.

IT professionals need to piece together these data metrics to provide them with a true end to end view that enables them to troubleshoot or asses the security risk of an event. Rebasoft provides a fresh and unique approach that complements existing technologies.

Innovation Rebasoft’s next-generation software solutions were built from the ground up, by industry veterans that have previously worked for the largest infrastructure vendors in the world.

The company took this knowledge and the input from customers and partners to take a fresh approach. The result was a network with worldclass capabilities, which truly enhance the way IT professionals work.

We are the first company to collect data from various data sources within the corporate infrastructure and correlate that data in a way which makes it quick and easy to use and understand.

Products Auditor Core Provides complete network and security visibility Rebasoft Auditor Core is a next-generation software application designed to give organizations unrivalled visibility into all devices and users connecting to the network. The one, accurate, up-to-date source of what is happening on your network is the network itself.

Using standard mechanisms Auditor Core can, in real-time, interrogate the network and catalogue every device connected over time.

Auditor Core takes the captured data and correlates the end device, the allocated network address and, if enabled, the user that has authenticated to the domain. This provides both a real-time view as well as an historic record of

all network access. This basic set of information can be used for a variety of purposes within an organization such as security, problem management, change control and more.

Rebasoft says that Auditor Core goes beyond many other systems, in allowing real world information to be reported along with the network; a user will be a real person in a real department in a physical location not just an abstract userID. These relationships can be seen at-a-glance. Auditor Core is open, you do not necessarily need to throw away existing systems; integration and coexistence are part of Core’s DNA. Key benefits include: • Total network visibility- software helps with operational efficiency by showing the entire network and relating it to users-this saves time and effort in managing operational tasks.

• Reduce downtime - software’s capabilities mean that information can be found faster, leading to improved MTTR (mean-time-torepair).

• Improved network security - security on a network must start with an understanding of what needs to be secured. Auditor Core provides the foundation for security asset management by showing all users and devices connected to your network.

• Manage network capacity - capacity planning lets users manage adds, moves and changes more effectively-enabling much better use of your existing infrastructure investment.

Application Auditor Application Auditor is a system that is designed to collect and report on application usage across your whole your infrastructure. It is a next generation solution that can accommodate internal and external application flows from network switches and perimeter firewalls/routers and more; simplifying operations and saving money.

While Application Auditor runs as a separate application, it is designed to work as part of Security or Threat Auditor; working together with Auditor Core to deliver unique capabilities that address both IT security and operational needs.

Application Auditor’s high performance collection and reporting facilities deliver a broad range of capabilities - from high level reports to the granular ability to identify a single flow between devices on the network.

Application Auditor also provides the ability to profile end-devices on the network for security assurance - generating automated alerts when devices become non-compliant with usage or security policies. www.rebasoft.net

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NETWORKS

How ISPs can embrace the need for speed

Overcoming The Fibre Challenge Shayan Sanyal discusses the fibre changes taking place in the national infrastructure...

By Shayan Sanyal, CCO, Bluwan

infoburst We all love fibre...

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Introduction The importance of a broadband connection in the digital age cannot be denied. Many people are now seeing simple Internet connectivity as the fourth utility.

The technology has the ability to not only drive business growth, but also increase the GDP of a country, and provide a better quality of life to users.

As a result, there has been significant global investment in the rollout of fibre-based broadband access over the last few years. The UK government has so far invested £1.2 billion in the rollout of superfast broadband and has proposed an additional £300 million of taxpayers’ money to enhance coverage by 2015.

Similarly, the US government has invested $30 billion per year since 2005 into deploying broadband across the country, and Google has recently spent $84 million to build a fibre network that connects just 149,000 homes in Kansas City.

Despite this ongoing investment, there are still questions around how broadband will be rolled out to areas that fibre cannot reach - specifically rural areas where some communities have yet to enjoy any commercial broadband services.

It’s also becoming increasingly critical for highdensity urban areas to have the capacity needed to allow business to flourish. However, trenching fibre in these areas can cause considerable physical disruption and in many cases simply isn’t possible.

The 4th utility If broadband Internet access is truly the fourth utility, then ISPs must find solutions to the challenges they are currently facing, as they look to roll out fibre optic broadband infrastructure in both urban and rural areas. Critically, they must find a way to balance the need for greater capacity and bandwidth with the cost of rolling out fibre and the price point offered to users.

A recent Ofcom study revealed that the quality of broadband connections still varies greatly according to where you live in the UK, even within urban areas.

Despite the fact that most of BT’s commercial deployment of superfast fibre broadband is concentrated in urban areas, Ofcom found that users in cities and towns are still putting up with `very low’ broadband speeds.

The study also discovered that some users are receiving less than 2Mbps and that people in Cardiff and Inverness are twice as likely to be on a slow connection than those in London or Birmingham.

Furthermore, businesses in areas such as the Silicon Roundabout or Tech City in central London – zones touted by the government as `tech hubs’ par excellence - are reliant on digital technology.

Many organisations in these zones work in new digital-based communications, marketing and entertainment sectors, and a decent connection to the world is essential.

An affordable but poor, or good but expensive,

infoburst Fibre allows far faster data...

broadband connection can really hamper their ability to perform and scale. These new fast growth companies are focused on creating defendable data assets, working with distributed teams across the globe, and need fast, reliable, low latency connections. Fibre seems to be the only solution to enable such scalability.

However, deploying fibre is expensive and incredibly time consuming to roll out, regardless of the potential revenue opportunities. The connection speeds and capacity required for businesses is often considerably higher for domestic users but the time and effort required to roll-out high capacity fibre means that many ISPs must pass the cost on to their customers in order to meet return on investment criteria.

As a result, ISPs have become used to charging higher line rental rates but this ultimately makes the price point offered to businesses very high compared to the cost of consumer broadband.

For small companies, start-ups and those in early growth phases – the engines of our new economy – broadband rates in the thousands per year range are simply not affordable.

Unless ISPs find an alternative to fibre access, they risk their entire business model collapsing. For example, a company in a business park in Greater Manchester four-minutes walk from a cabinet enabled with fibre optic broadband, could be charged a typical installation fee of £500 and an annual line rental of £5,200 plus VAT for a relatively slow 10 Mbps connection.

This cost is simply too expensive for small businesses and start-ups who need high bandwidth, high-density services at a sustainable return on investment.

In order for ISPs to provide affordable high bandwidth broadband to businesses in urban areas, they must overcome the deployment challenge that fibre poses, particularly disruption caused by the trenching of fibre and the cost of roll out.

Gigabit cities Deploying into both rural and urban areas is an ongoing challenge for ISPs. Despite claims that

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the UK government’s nationwide broadband rollout is ahead of schedule, and that thousands of homes and businesses up and down the country are already seeing the benefits, there is constant criticism that much like urban speeds, rural broadband speeds on a global level aren’t up to scratch.

While governments in the UK, Europe and particularly in the US have been distracted with the potential of superfast broadband (24Mbps) and gigabit cities, large areas of the country remain underserved.

Last year financial analysts at Bernstein Research estimated that in the US a national Google Fibre roll out that passed only 15 per cent of US homes would cost upwards of $11 billion a year for five years, on top of the $84 million already invested.

This further highlights that deploying a fibre network is a costly and complex process. Businesses and governments need to get back to basics, invest in infrastructure and focus on connecting the last mile before getting excited about higher broadband speeds and gigabit cities.

Conclusions Connecting rural and urban areas is just the first hurdle for ISPs. As the demand for rich video content, cloud computing and other high bandwidth activities increases, the need for high capacity broadband is only set to grow in both environments.

The need for capacity is crucial. ISPs can certainly invest in fibre and build a next generation fibre network. However, with more capacity, ISPs could support more broadband connections over a single fibre and deliver new services at a much lower cost to the customer.

Furthermore, by providing higher bandwidth services, ISPs can take advantage of the businesses and organisations that need this connectivity in order to flourish.

Extending the fibre network is a complex process. ISPs need to find a way to provide high capacity access in a way that is affordable both for it to deploy and for the price point offered to its

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infoburst Fast broadband = faster access to all the information you need...

customers. Fundamentally this requires a shift in the economics of the fibre deployment.

In order to make the fibre roll out financially viable, ISPs must be able to support multiple connections through a single access point, all at sufficiently high capacity. This challenge is however not exclusive to urban areas; ISPs are also facing this problem in multi-occupancy business properties, as well as in rural and residential areas.

In order to meet the economic challenge, ISPs need to extend the reach of existing fibre, with fibre-like capacities. This is possible by deploying wireless technology into areas that would otherwise be hard to reach when trenching fibre.

A point to multipoint solution is one such technology that can handle up to 20 connections and still provide more than 125 Mbps capacity to each customer. Connecting a small to medium size business to fibre like speeds could be 50 per cent less expensive using these new technologies, dramatically shifting the economics of delivering very high throughput connectivity.

There has been significant investment in the roll out of fibre broadband across the globe, as governments and businesses have recognised the economic and social opportunities that a viable Internet connection can provide.

It is, however, vital that ISPs find a balance between the cost of deploying the fibre and the price point that is offered to users. Whether it is conswumer broadband or broadband for enterprises, rural or urban areas, the challenges are simple and it boils down to connectivity at an affordable price point.

As our reliance on the ‘fourth utility’ continues to grow, ISPs must invest in the right technology and infrastructure that will be best for their customers and provide the capabilities they need, and only then will they overcome the current challenges and see the benefits the ‘fourth utility’ can offer.

About Bluewan Bluwan’s carrier grade multi-gigabit wireless transmission technology is billed as allowing service providers to increase the throughput and capacity of existing networks.

Operating in the 42 GHz spectrum band, the wireless technology can be deployed primarily for mobile backhaul and wide area broadband access applications.

Offering fibre-like speeds and capacity, its compact radio antennas allow service providers to deploy multimedia services at a fraction of the cost of deploying optical fibre, whether to individual cell sites or to customer premises.

Bluwan’s solutions are the culmination of several years of R&D performed in collaboration with the Thales Group in the defence and aerospace markets.

The company is headquartered in Paris, France, with additional offices in London. www.bluewan.com

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NETWORKS

How the networking future is not all about microwave and fibre

infoburst Network backhaul remains essential to effective communications...

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NETWORKS

Could New Innovations

Stunt Fibre’s Growth?

Frank Kaufhold explains why there is life left in copper technology...

By Frank Kaufhold, Managing Director, UTEL

Introduction With the recent growth in smartphone and tablet users, alongside the development of hundreds of thousands of applications, consumers around the globe are using and expecting availability and access to more and more mobile data. Indeed, this market is growing at such a rapid rate that, according to a 2013 Cisco report, by the end of 2014 the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth.

That same report predicted that by 2018 there will be nearly 1.4 mobile devices per capita. Meanwhile, global mobile data volumes have nearly doubled every year. For mobile and fixed operators alike, the data leads to just one conclusion – now is the time for a 4G infrastructure to be put in place.

The introduction of 4G presents both opportunities and challenges in equal measure; with one of the main obstacles for operators being the problem of providing backhaul to individual cells. This is nothing new. Backhaul is already a challenging issue in the 3G world and 4G deployments only serve to amplify this.

After only just overcoming the demand for 3G, a world of 4G subscriptions is already in motion, with the US, Japan and the majority of Europe already a part of the revolution. Add to the mix the era of the smart home which is also on the horizon and data volumes can only continue to increase, with customers expecting - and demanding - an even more reliable network.

The more those customers rely on these smart technologies, the more they will notice when the

service is disrupted, making it imperative that the challenge backhaul brings to the table is overcome.

Finding a solution The question, then, is how to do this? The telecoms industry seems to be primarily focused on fibre as the answer and, on face value at least, it is certainly an attractive option. Fibre can provide backhaul for all mobile data networks and boasts the ability to provide almost unlimited data throughput. More generally, fibre is also immune to many environmental factors that affect copper cable, most notably water ingress that has been a big factor recently.

The core is made of glass, an insulator, so no electric current can flow through, eliminating electrometric interference and radio-frequency interference (EM/RFI), crosstalk, impedance problems, and more. Fibre cable can also be run next to industrial equipment without worry, is less susceptible to temperature fluctuations and can be submerged in water.

There are, however, also downsides to fibre.

The first, and probably most important, drawback is the huge expense associated with deploying fibre. Moving away from the initial cost, while more durable than copper, fibre is vulnerable to faults and these tend to be caused by human error, for example poor practice, lack of training or carelessness.

There’s also a risk with cables laid on the street or overhead that other utilities can come across them accidentally and unwittingly damage

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them. It is in fixing these faults that fibre presents another challenge in that so much has already been achieved with fixing faults on copper lines, with centralised testing systems allowing operators to reduce staff and costs by around 50 per cent.

The trick is to replicate the success achieved with copper for fibre and our GPON (Gigabitcapable Passive Optical Networks) fibre management system has managed to do that but is not yet widely deployed enough to realise its capabilities of eliminating the conventional manual fault finding processes along with the skilled technicians, the truck roles and the costly handheld OTDRs (Optical Time-Domain Reflectometers) that were previously required to fault PONs. The lack of deployment of a centralised testing system could stem from the fact that fibre still has fairly low penetration, suggesting that while this technology has huge potential in the future, there is still work yet to be done for that potential to be realised.

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infoburst Complex networking - the lifeblood of modern communications...

Microwave options Moving away from fibre, another solution currently being explored by the telecoms industry to meet growing demand is high-bandwidth microwave solutions. This technology offers irrefutable speed advantages, mainly because of its ability to travel point-to-point enabling the data to travel the shortest distance possible.

Like fibre, however, microwave solutions are expensive to deploy and the point-to-point capability means it is also susceptible to signal interference from obstructions, which interrupt the line, the data is taking. This makes it unsuitable for many urban and suburban areas, as well as hilly or mountainous regions.

In addition to the potential for signal disruption, there is also a finite number of microwave towers across Europe and a finite number of dishes that can be fitted on to these towers. Inevitably this will lead to a race among providers to gain access to these towers meaning that microwave access is likely to become restricted to the early adopters.

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As a result of the drawbacks of fibre and microwave solutions, innovative technology vendors are beginning to look at tried, tested and reliable copper solutions more and more in a bid to provide an interim solution to meet growing demand while fibre infrastructure roll out is completed.

While the reasons operators had begun to move away from copper – mainly the inability to handle the huge amounts of data required for Internet and television – still exist, so too do the advantages, including the fact they use PoE (Power over Ethernet), protecting them from power cuts; have less expensive electronics and are more flexible. Furthermore, copper lines still make up the majority of home connections so utilising them would provide a cost-effective and economically justified outcome.

The old and the new Cost-effective and economically justified is, of course, good news for operators but what about the operator’s customers?

All that matters to them is being able to get the services and high-speed connection from their home devices at the touch of a button with no complications and at a low cost. Whether the connection and services are delivered over fibre, microwave or copper is not a factor in their choice of network provider.

So, how can operators overcome the disadvantages of copper and eliminate the cons that stop it delivering the sort of service customers want?

Success has already been seen with solutions, such as G.fast, which are widely available to boost the speed of copper lines and reduce the cost for end users but now, thanks to some innovative technology vendors and solution providers, enhancement of existing copper lines has now been taken a step further.

One of the main limitations of a copper infrastructure is the requirement for interconnect technology to be manually managed, resulting in higher costs and an increased risk of human error. For operators choosing to adopt new highspeed copper solution technology for backhaul infrastructure this is usually a huge deterrent but a new solution could prove to be coppers secret weapon.

The new solution works to make the interconnection automated; thereby removing the drawbacks of high costs and risk of human error and allowing operators to take back control of network management.

“While fibre certainly heralds many advantages over copper and, in years to come, is likely to be the main source of connectivity, for now the huge expense associated with deployment does present a problem”

A fully managed system like this will enable operators to easily provide new and different services to customers on an almost on-demand basis – the first step in achieving one of the operator’s main goals of attracting and retaining happy and loyal customers and something which is crucial in this fast-paced digital age.

Final chapter?

Far from being a pipedream, work is already underway to enable the vision of this fully managed system at an affordable cost for operators. So, does this signal the beginning of the end for fibre?

While fibre certainly heralds many advantages over copper and, in years to come, is likely to be the main source of connectivity, for now the huge expense associated with deployment does present a problem. An automated interconnection system, therefore, could see operators decide to delay their investment in fibre for at least a decade, as long as the copper pipes are serviceable and functioning without performance compromise.

In rural areas, where fibre is less likely to be installed due to the low return on investment, copper becomes an even more attractive option.

On the other hand, more and more is being invested in fibre, particularly in urban areas where there is more demand for higher speeds and the promise of a higher return on investment. In areas such as these, fibre will most likely always be the technology of choice due to its unrivalled capacity to handle the huge amounts of data it is required to cope with.

When predicting the technology of the future, then, fibre is undoubtedly a solution that will feature high on the list. The question, then, is will a fully managed copper system give copper one last hurrah and stunt the progress in delivering a 21st century Europe-wide fibre network? www.utel.co.uk

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CASESTUDY

How Schneider Electric powers the Limerick connection

The Power Of

Schneider Electric Revealed

Schneider Electric, the power (and cooling) behind Dell Solution Centres Introduction Dell Solution Centres (DSC) focus on delivering technical customer engagements, building solutions across core domains and industry solutions, ISV certification and sales enablement activities.

Each Solution Centre enables prospective customers to experience the full capability of Dell solutions to solve their IT challenges, meet their business requirements and maximise their technology budgets.

“Our global network of fifteen Solution Centres provides everything from a short technology briefing to multi-day workshops and proof of concepts for IT stakeholders to collaborate with our team of technology experts and experience first hand how Dell solutions can help solve their business challenges. Through the Solution Centres we partner with our customers to evaluate innovative technologies, while we will help them identify and implement solutions aimed at increasing productivity and business efficiency,” says Brian Hayden, global infrastructure lead with Dell.

Mega-trends Driven by global mega-trends such as cloud computing, mobility, security and big data, more than 15,000 customer engagements have passed through the Solution Centres during the last three years. Each DSC is supported by an operating data centre in which customer environments can be tested and new solutions evaluated.

Hayden is clear about the importance of the facilities: “If we lost a data centre at a decisive time in the customer engagement, it could have a major impact upon a customer project,” he explained.

The data centres also provide a showcase for Dell solutions so that customers can evaluate servers, storage and networking equipment in operation as well as judging their effects on the network and physical infrastructure as a whole.

The DSC has invested extensively in facilities to ensure maximum uptime for their requirements.

“Our customers are always interested in our

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infoburst Data centres also provide a showcase for Dell solutions...

data centres – what’s in them and how they are run. The challenge of running a reliable and efficient data centre is something they can all relate to,” says Hayden.

IT teams Working with both facilities and IT teams to deliver a standard set of services to customers, Hayden’s role at Dell gives him a unique appreciation of the pressures on both teams. He works with local organisations to ensure that data centres are built with sufficient power and cooling capacity to support customer engagements, which also includes architecting the infrastructure and, when necessary, upgrading facilities to accommodate latest generation IT equipment.

On a daily basis he is responsible for dealing with emerging issues affecting continuity of services, and working alongside a virtual facilities team to resolve any alerts.

“As technology evolves at the hardware level we need smarter infrastructure. Compute nodes have got denser, so has storage equipment. As the devices increase in power density, it puts a strain on the power and cooling capacity available in the data centre,” he said.

CASESTUDY

infoburst A virtual team manages the facilities...

Customer “When we design a solution for a customer we need to look at it from an end-to-end point of view. As we build out the solution we need to consider the full and total cost of ownership, including the data centre. If we shrink the form factor of the device, the power and cooling element doesn’t simply disappear. Just as customers are concerned about the efficiency of each server, they want to know about the power and cooling demand which is about to be placed on their facilities,” he said.

At the heart of Dell’s strategic approach is its long-term partnership with Schneider Electric, its StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM and its APC

by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure solution for ondemand data centres.

Hayden explains the rationale behind the partnership and why it has been so beneficial to Dell. “In short they are a tried and trusted partner that I knew about at a component level and which our facilities team knew at a data centre level. What is particularly unique is their modular approach and the fact that they were pioneers in high-density in-row cooling technology. Just as customers are interested in seeing state-of-the-art IT offerings from Dell, they’re also interested in the latest power and cooling technologies – like the HACS and free coolers.”

Limerick campus The Limerick Campus is supported by three different data centres which host 70 racks containing over 1500 enterprise servers, switches, storage and networking equipment.

The profile of each facility is very different, ranging from a traditional raised floor environment with perimeter CRAC to a latest generation, high efficiency solution with segregated hot and cold aisles and integrated Uniflair free cooling.

“Free cooling is a great talking point. The facilities team looked at different variations – direct and indirect free cooling before making the decision. We knew that there are a large number of free cooling hours available in this area, whenever the ambient temperature is 18 degrees or lower in fact. This was enough to build a strong business case with a quick ROI; during 2012 the data centre ran on free cooling for 302 days, saving us approximately $25k in energy costs,” says Hayden.

The company has adopted PUE as a metric for its data centre test environments and utilises a number of tools to monitor and measure efficiency.

Schneider Electric’s data centre expert provides a dashboard view of all the facilities throughout EMEA - showing everything from threshold alerts to open cabinet doors and power load.

Because a virtual team manages the facilities, a portal has been created to provide an inside view of what’s going on inside the data centres, including thermal mapping and analysis. A high level of software use and automation significantly increases the capabilities and responsiveness of the small management team.

“In EMEA we’re also using Schneider Electric Data Centre Operations software which allows us to ensure, for example, we’re balancing loads correctly in the data centres. We can simulate cooling failures and the impact upon the servers, create thermal maps across the room. We make sure that we’re using best practices so that customers can be confident that the proof of concept they are running has been implemented in a properly run environment,” he explained.

The DSC team also utilises power-use data from operating facilities in order to size new data centres.

“They (Schneider Electric) handle every single aspect of the build. They don’t just drop the kit off, they handle all of the build and obviously they have the integrated solution with the software stack as well which provides the complete package to monitor and manage the data centre.” Brian Hayden continues, “With the software side of things it means you can standardise across a single platform which means increased familiarity with the system and less training,” says Hayden. www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dellsolutions-center www.schneider-electric.com

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CONVERGEDINFRASTRUCTURE

Enhancing the security of networks

RiT Technologies Discusses

The Upcoming AIM Standard...

AIMing for the optimum technical implementations...

Why now?

Scheduled to be released next month, the AIM (Automated Infrastructure Management) standard is designed to improve the security of networks, increase equipment life, decrease labour costs, and reduce downtime while providing the ability to supply network connectivity as a service.

Defining the requirements for real-time visibility and control of all network physical components this standard sets common processes for enhanced network documentation, automatic alarms, alerts, and improved management for network MACs (Move, Add and Changes).

Although AIM functionality has been around for several years here are 5 reasons why this standard is being introduced now.

Increasing network complexity - The growth of strategic IT trends such as mobile computing, server virtualisation and the public cloud is making the data centre environment more dynamic.

At the same time, the higher density of equipment and connections in data centres is making it more difficult to keep an accurate record of network topologies and connections.

Automated end to end real time documentation of all components and their connections including fibre channel circuits, storage area network (SAN) switch boards, and remote access connections enables better management of complex networks.

Growing labour costs - In many cases management of physical infrastructure is done manually with “on-board tools” such as Excel

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infoburst AIM defines the requirements for real-time visibility and control of all network physical components...

spreadsheets and Visio graphics. Precious time is wasted trying to document highly dynamic network topologies, while making diagnosing and resolving network problems more difficult and time consuming.

In addition, without automated solutions adding or moving components is more labour intensive and prone to human error. With AIM the entire infrastructure is represented in a consistent database, which provides precise and real-time information on the current status and future network requirements.

Also, AIM systems provide automated work order management, with guiding mechanisms and mobile applications that enable technicians to complete and update work orders more efficiently Wasted resources - without a real time inventory of network components there can be multiple assignments to the same ports, or alternatively organizations can continue to pay for equipment and connections that have not been properly deactivated.

With an intelligent management system, processes can be established to ensure that when servers or switches are decommissioned, all intermediate connections and switch ports are freed up and available for future use.

AIM allows businesses to achieve increased cost efficiency spanning the data centre’s entire life cycle from planning design, procurement, installation, daily management of moves, adds and changes (MACS) to the eventual upgrade.

Costly downtime - The average cost of downtime according to the Ponemon Institute is around $5,600 per minute or $336,000 per hour, with the number-one cause for downtime still being the “human element.” IIM monitors network components, alerting early on to trouble

CONVERGEDINFRASTRUCTURE spots and internet congestion which if left unhandled can cause downtime or decrease output. The result is a better-managed network with greater output, stability and robustness.

Compromised security - networks are vulnerable on multiple levels - from malware attacks to manipulation or theft of operational data to unauthorized network access.

As more industrial operations become linked to corporate networks, and connectivity is pushed out to devices, the number of entrance points onto the network increases.

Where security vulnerabilities may occur, organizations must develop safeguards within the infrastructure to reduce the opportunity for intrusion. IIM adds an extra layer of security to mission critical communications networks by guarding the network from unauthorized connects, disconnects, moves and changes.

Providing complete real-time control of all network physical components and their connections, AIM provides businesses with a more robust network infrastructure with increased productivity and service availability. Automatically documenting all network components and their connections results in a better-managed network with greater independence and intelligence.

According to Gartner, intelligent infrastructure in the data centre can cut operational costs by

20-30 per cent, decrease downtime, optimise power and space utilization, accelerate service deployment and enhance security.

This is why the AIM standard will be published later this year in the US (through TIA standard organisation) and later in Europe (through the ISO organization) and AIM platforms are advocated by industry leaders as a new best-practice for managing data centres.

About RiT Technologies Founded 25 years ago, RiT Technologies is a unique provider of network infrastructure solutions for data centres and communication networks.

RiT pioneered IIM (Intelligent Infrastructure Management) for companies and organizations wanting to achieve full control of their network infrastructure; a technology that has been adopted by all the leading cabling vendors and is currently in the process of standardization by ISO/ IEC.* The RiT range of solutions comprises of IIM (Intelligent infrastructure Management), DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management), structured cabling solutions, and an innovative indoor optical wireless technology solution for networks. www.rittech.com

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commited to better

NETWORKS IRELAND 31

DATACENTRES

Why data centre load testing is now a `must have’ option

The Perils Of Ignoring

Load Testing

Dave Wolfenden explains the benefits of load testing in modern data centres...

By Dave Wolfenden, Director, Mafi Mushkila

Introduction Testing a data centre prior to formal handover to the client is a normal part of data centre construction, but few IT professionals look at the testing that is carried out, that can affect modern centres in the future. The usual reason for this is that, until a full set of servers and allied IT systems are in place, it is perceived as impossible to test a data centre under full loading conditions.

This is actually an incorrect assumption, and one that seems to be perpetuated by a number of misunderstandings regarding the complex technologies involved in a typical data centre.

In many cases airflow within the data centre is modelled using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling software during the design phase. In addition to the testing set out by the commissioning team the CFD model should be proven before the IT infrastructure is installed.

The reality is that the testing of a good data centre needs to be carefully planned and executed to ensure continuous operation for the design life of the data centre.

The data centre facility should be tested at a variety of load levels, working up to 100 per cent load. The majority of energy consumed by IT infrastructure is rejected as heat, meaning that the simplest way to replicate the IT infrastructure is the use of fan heaters.

In the past these varied from 2 or 3kw domestic fan heaters to large floor standing space heaters to produce load. In most cases the safety thermal cut out had to be removed to cope with elevated temperatures within modern data centres.

The heaters are often connected to temporary power supplies. These types of load do not reflect the airflow and temperature range akin to IT infrastructure and do not test the power supply end-to-end. infoburst Heaters are often connected to temporary power supplies...

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DATACENTRES

100 per cent The CFD model at 100 per cent is likely to assume that the data centre is fully occupied with floor standing and rack mounted IT infrastructure.

The reality is that during testing only some of the racks may be installed. To ensure the testing process is valid, temporary measures need to be in place to ensure the layout and load distribution to reflect the CFD model layout.

These measures could include installation of temporary IT racks, blanking, construction of temporary walls / aisle containment and the implementation of heaters and server emulators that reflect the load distribution across the data centre.

If the customer’s IT racks have been implemented the heat load should be connected using the power strips installed within the racks.

This may be the only time that the power strips are fully loaded (and therefore completely tested).

Whilst the latter two issues can be met using sensible planning, effective heat control is something of a science in its own right, as dissipating heat - from whatever source within the data centre is a critical process.

If carried out poorly or using unreliable technology, then a runaway heat problem can quickly turn into an IT disaster, shortening both system and server lifespan at best - and causing equipment failures at worst.

Given companies increasing reliance on data centres to service the IT needs of their business, an equipment failure can cause a number of problems - ranging from a temporary outage of telephony and computer services for staff and allied personnel, all the way to a failure of an organisation’s e-commerce web site - causing customer confusion, loss of brand loyalty and an ongoing loss of revenue.

ROI/cost issues In an ideal world, a business could throw enough money at a data centre project to ensure 100 per cent uptime and happy customers, as well as staff.

In the real world however - even in a missioncritical application - there are clear ROI (Return on Investment) issues that must be addressed when planning, testing and maintaining an effective facility.

For most of our clients, this translates to the effective testing of a data centre at all possible stages in its planning and development, all the way from the computer modelling aspect of the installation, right through to the test heat and power loading prior to the installation of the relevant IT systems and servers.

So why do we need server emulators to complete the heat load testing process?

The reason for this is that a new IT equipment room, data centre - or modular data centre - is designed and expected to run continuously for the

infoburst Modular units are the key to effective siting of hardware...

duration of its design lifetime, which can amount to many years, even in today’s rapidly evolving IT arena.

To achieve this level of reliability it is necessary to thoroughly test the infrastructure before it goes into operation, both physically – using test equipment – and using appropriate CFD software to model the airflow within a facility and provide a graphic analysis of how the hot and cool air flows.

Using actual servers to complete the tests is not possible for a variety of reasons, including the cost of filling the data centre with servers, the potential for damage to IT equipment and the time it would take to reset servers after each test.

Coupled with the need for fixed, predictable loading during testing, a server emulator provides a variable electrical load and produces a heat load. These loads allow the testing of the electrical and cooling systems in a controlled environment.

On the electrical test front, the use of head load banks and allied systems can make life simpler for data centre developers and facilities managers, as well as on the power governance front, as they help prove the efficacy of static transfer switches under partial and full load conditions.

As part of this element of the testing process, good testing equipment allows the thermal inspection of all joints and connections under a full load condition before the building becomes operational, so reducing the fire risk.

One useful side effect of this process is that the electrical assessment process provides confirmation that power monitoring and billing equipment is operating correctly, as well as minimising risks and issues that may not otherwise be found for several years.

Allied to the electrical check process is the testing of ancillary systems such as electromechanical and mechanical units, pumps, cooling and chiller systems, as well as Room Air Conditioning Units (RACU) where appropriate.

These test processes are also useful for load testing of intermediate heat exchangers - which are usually installed to reduce water leakage loss in the suite, with capacities ranging from 100,000 litres all the way down to 250 litres.

Other processes can also include the proving of fail-safe systems on high-density racks - such as confirming doors will open in the event of in rack cooling component or system failure.

On the water chilling side, the testing process normally requires load testing to prove that the chilled water ring has a sufficient volume of cold water to allow the chillers to restart when a generator kicks in, so negating the requirement to UPS-equip the chillers for resilience. www.mafi-mushkila.co.uk

NETWORKS IRELAND 33

BETTERBUSINESS How the cloud can make your IT systems more robust

Understanding

cloud disaster recovery services Peter Godden looks at how virtualisation is helping organisations strengthen their disaster recovery positions.

By Peter Godden, Vice President of EMEA, Zerto

the cloud for IT recovery is that current arraybased replication techniques are not well suited to the increasingly virtualised workloads that are becoming more common, across the IT landscape.

Array-based replication products are provided by the storage vendors and deployed as modules inside the storage array. Examples include EMC SRDF and NetApp SnapMirror. As such, they are single-vendor solutions, compatible only with the specific storage solution already in use.

Currently the most popular replication method in use in organisations, arraybased replication, does not have the granularity that is needed in a virtual environment or to replicate these virtual environments into the cloud.

Introduction It seems by the stream of TV advertisements and buzz in the technology press that cloud computing is a methodology that can solve deeply intractable problems in the data centre. However, many organisations often adopt cloud to help solve one initial issue, using the cloud as both a remedy and a test bed to gain an understanding of the potential. A survey last year at Amazon Web Services Global Customer and Partner Conference found around two thirds (60%) cited cost savings and disaster recovery as the factors most heavily driving cloud storage adoption.

However, the desire to use the cloud is tempered by the practical realities and additional fears. To quantify this position, Zerto conducted a further survey which found cost and complexity are both the biggest concerns with ‘difficult to manage’ coming in close third. Even the companies that have a DR implementation, only 23% are confident their DR will work in the case of a real emergency.

One of the fundamental problems with using

34 NETWORKS IRELAND

InfoBurst Zerto’s technology: creating a powerful Disaster Recovery platform...

Mapping across For example, mapping between virtual disks and array volumes is complex and constantly changing, creating management challenges and additional storage overhead. Often, multiple virtual machines reside on a single array volume, or logical unit. An array-based solution will replicate the entire volume even if only one virtual machine in the volume needs to be replicated.

This under utilises the storage and results in what is known as “storage sprawl.”

Because array-based replication lacks the visibility and granularity to identify specific virtual machines in different locations, organisations tend to put all disks from an enterprise application into a single storage logical unit, when in fact there are operational advantages to splitting them up over a number of logical units.

Array-based replication has several other important disadvantages that limits its suitability to a cloud based DR position. Essentially, it is designed to replicate physical entities rather

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BETTERBUSINESS

than virtual entities. As a result, it doesn’t “see” the virtual machines and is oblivious to configuration changes – and due to their dynamic nature, virtual environments have a high rate of change.

As the starting position for a successful cloud DR strategy, a growing trend is to use hypervisor based replication technology which protects virtual machines (VMs) at the virtual machine disk format file level rather than at the LUN or storage volume level, thus replication can be done without the management and TCO challenges associated with array-based replication.

Because it is installed directly inside the virtual infrastructure (as opposed to on individual machines), Hypervisor based replication is able to replicate within the virtualisation layer itself, so that each time the virtual machine writes to its virtual disks, the write command is captured, cloned, and sent to the cloud recovery site. This is more efficient, accurate, and responsive than prior methods.

“As the starting position for a successful cloud DR strategy, a growing trend is to use hypervisor based replication technology which protects virtual machines” The first type of approach is a Private Cloud where business continuity and disaster recovery sits between two or more geographically separate sites, all under the control of the enterprise’s IT team and deployed as a private cloud.

This approach allows enterprises to create a flexible and dynamic environment in which their IT departments can scale and mobilise applications depending on needs and resources at any point in time by delivering IT infrastructures across multiple geographical sites.

Taking this approach also helps enterprises to evenly distribute production load between multiple data centres and recovery sites. However, this is more complicated to set-up and manage and places more technical heavy lift on the internal IT department.

Hypervisor replication Hypervisor based replication is fully agnostic to storage source and destination, natively supporting all storage platforms and the full breadth of capabilities made possible by virtualisation, including high availability, clustering, and the ability to locate and replicate volumes in motion.

Hypervisor based replication technologies are becoming standard in a virtualised environment, but even with the technology there are still a number of options that should be considered, as although cloud is well suited to DR but it is not a one hat fits all approach. It is helpful to define the options as this helps to understand the benefits and limitations of the different cloud based approaches.

Conclusions The advent of virtualisation and the growth of cloud computing offer a significant opportunity to strengthen disaster recovery processes. With the inclusion of hypervisor based replication technologies and the benefits of private and as-a-service options, the cost and complexity of disaster recovery options is falling, offering the economies of scale to drive down costs even further.

The Zerto 2.0 option Whatever path enterprises chose in their application deployment, Zerto provides a BC/DR solution that fits.

Zerto Virtual Replication is the only cloud-ready BC/DR platform providing enterprise-class protection to applications deployed in virtualised environments and private or public clouds.

The technology enables Disaster Recovery-as-a- Service and true, cloud BC/DR for cloud service providers and enterprise customers, respectively.

Enterprises can expand BC/DR support to include not just the traditional data centre, but also smaller branch offices and other sites through multi-site capabilities. Additionally, this lowers barriers to entry for the enterprise to evaluate the cloud for other applications in the environment, perhaps a tier 2 application.

The multi-tenancy features greatly increase efficiencies at the disaster site, especially if there are geographically separate production sites replicating over to the same disaster site.

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One infrastructure, managed centrally through VMware vCentre and vCloud Director, can now simplify management and reduce operational costs.

CSPs (Cloud Service Providers) are able to attract new customers by offering a cost-effective service that enables customers to effectively evaluate the CSP without complete dependency.

CSPs can make the price very attractive to enterprises as they do not have to create a completely duplicate infrastructure with matching hardware, software and networking. Additionally, they do not have to have a widely specialised team and can focus on what they have in their environment.

Finally, with true multi-tenancy, economies of scale can be leveraged to further drive down costs for customers. www.zerto.com

We take care of your data centre so you can take care of your business.

Increase uptime and lower total cost of ownership.

Exceed performance goals with standardised processes.

Operation Services simplify data centre maintenance, helping you reduce OpEx, optimise energy use and minimise downtime.

Who runs your data centre?

In an environment where human error can be a significant cause of downtime, effective operations and maintenance need to be implemented by welltrained specialists who have superior technical expertise. That’s what we offer with Schneider Electric™ Operation Services. Whether you require Vendor Management, Managed Maintenance, or complete Facility Operations, our services ensure your data center gets the customised care that allows you to focus on your core business.

Optimise operations and save money.

Our approach uses standidised best practices and automation tools that have been developed over 15 years of managing mission-critical facilities worldwide.

This proven methodology keeps your data centre consistently operating at an optimum level. With steamlined maintenance activities and emergency support, you can significantly increase performance, reliability, efficiency and safety throughout your data entre’s life cycle. Operation Services make business sense. You save money by reducing operating expenses, avoiding costly downtime and minimising unplanned costs related to service interruptions and equipment repairs. Take the complexity out of day-to-day operations and contact Schneider Electric today.

Discover our full range of Data Centre Life Cycle Services: > Assess

Understand your performance and address technical and business challenges.

> Plan

Determine optimal performance, timing, regulatory compliance or sustainability.

> Design

Access an extensive design library to meet performance and safety needs.

> Build

Finish on time and on budget with commissioning, start-up and on-site project management.

> Operate

Simplify operations and minimise downtime with basic to advanced service offerings.

Business-wise, Future-drivenTM

Learn the top 10 mistakes to avoid in data centre operations!

Download our FREE white paper and enter to WIN a Samsung Galaxy Note® III Visit: www.SEreply.com Keycode: 50050P 52544P ©2014 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric and Business-wise, Future-driven are trademarks owned by Schneider Electric Industries SAS or its affiliated companies.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. iPad is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. www.schneider-electric.com • 998-1229694-GB

DATACENTRES

infoburst A shipping container or a modular data centre? You decide...

38 NETWORKS IRELAND

How modular can offer companies a flexible IT future

DATACENTRES

Are modular data centres

the Lego of IT? Matt Goulding discusses the industry shift toward modular data centres

By Matt Goulding, Managing Director, Cannon Technologies

I

T has always liked things that were modular. It plays to the engineering geek inside most IT professionals.

When Sun Microsystems announced Project Blackbox back in 2006, the company started a race to move from modular systems to modular data centres and a market that is estimated by Companies and Markets Research to be worth $40.41bn by 2018.

Before Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) launched Project Blackbox - later known as the Sun Modular Datacenter - a number of companies, including Google, had played around with the idea of modularising the data centre. However, it was Sun that took the headlines when it launched the Sun Modular Datacentre in 2008.

Sun took a 20-foot standard shipping container and built in all the racks, cabling and equipment required for it to become a data centre. All it needed was external power, chiller units and a network link.

What is a modular data centre?

The answer is that it all depends on whom you talk to. While there is no standardised description, most in the industry see it as a container based solution.

However, the length of the container and even the width can vary by manufacturer and product range. Despite this, what makes it modular is that the data centres can be bolted together and even stacked on top of each other to create a larger facility.

So what is driving this change? This is a complex question with a lot of different answers.

Some of them are about the technology while others are about cost.

There is no more powerful incentive to adopt an approach than cost. When Sun launched the modular data centre, it talked of being able to buy a data centre for less than one per cent of the price of a traditional facility.

There were many reasons for this. There is often no planning permission, no building costs or need to acquire an existing facility, as well as no decommissioning or reconfiguration costs as the business demand changed and no business rates on the use of a building.

All of those reasons are as true today as they were back then but perhaps the biggest cost reason was speed. It can take months and even years to build or refurbish a facility but a modular data centre can be provisioned in just weeks from the order being placed.

For service providers and data centre owners, modular is a huge opportunity. Google and Facebook today have hundreds of containers stacked together to create their data centres.

When they need additional capacity, they just drop in more containers.

Change is expensive One of the real challenges for the data centre is flexibility. For decades, the data centre didn’t change much. Even as we moved from mainframes to mini-computers and into early rack-based solutions, the data centre was reasonably static. With the explosion of commodity computing and blade servers, the data centre became a place of constant change.

For older facilities that means redesign, overhauling and updating in order to deliver the power and cooling requirements of new technologies. This is expensive. An overhaul of a data centre can cost millions of pounds and take months. During that period, no money is coming in and in a competitive market that means the potential loss of customers.

Modular data centres remove that need to lose customers and refurbish a facility. A refurbishment is simply a replacement module.

Customer systems moved from one module to another. Meanwhile the under performing module can be replaced or updated as required.

NETWORKS IRELAND 39

DATACENTRES

Dense computing brings scale-back Modular data centres are not just about the provision of extra capacity or for cover when refurbishing a data centre. With dense computing, data centres have shrunk in size for many companies.

Downsizing a data centre is just as expensive as adding more capacity. Power and cooling systems need to be maintained even if they are not being used. Data centre halls that are not being fully used, need to be partitioned to reduce waste and that means refurbishment costs.

Using a modular data centres, companies can quickly downsize or move from older, larger, systems to smaller, more efficient ones.

Portability brings new opportunities One of the real benefits of modular data centres has been the ability to deploy in new areas. The football World Cup, the US Football SuperBowl, the summer and winter Olympics, the football World Cup - as well as other global events - require data centre facilities, especially for media.

These events process large amounts of data, film, audio and run vast Internet sites to provide public information.

Disaster recovery operations, oil rigs, intelligence headquarters in war zones and even major political conferences have also bought into modular data centres. They all need to manipulate very large volumes of data and modular data centres make this possible and provide an opportunity to do so securely.

In 2010, the US government took a long and hard look at how it responded to major disasters.

One of the failings was the inability of government departments to respond caused by a lack of

40 NETWORKS IRELAND

infoburst Portability brings new opportunities...

data and IT facilities. The result was a document highlighting how departments should evaluate and then commission modular facilities.

Highly efficient and dense solutions Modular data centres are engineered to customer requirements. As they can be accessed from all sides, the components are integrated to create the most optimal configuration for power and cooling. Over time, as components alter, some of the initial integration may be lost but those losses will be offset by the power efficiencies of new generations of IT equipment.

The advantage of being able to tightly integrate equipment also means that the equipment can be as dense as possible in the space. Racks of blade systems require kW of power per square foot, something that many traditional data centres struggle to deliver.

Conclusion The next generation of switches that run at 40, 100 Gbps and even faster, require a lot more power.

Storage systems - even those with hundreds of Sold State Drives, also need a large amount of power.

Modular data systems are capable of supporting racks of blade systems, petabytes of storage and very high bandwidth, something that traditional facilities would need 10 times the floor space to accommodate.

Modular data centres such as the Cannon Technologies T4 MDC drive down costs, can be deployed wherever there is a need for compute power and are highly efficient. www.cannontech.co.uk

CASESTUDY

Simplifying the networking selection process

Using OpenStack In An All-IP Environment Axel Clauberg explains how OpenStack has been the key to a new all-IP triple play network offering...

By Axel Clauberg, Vice President Aggregation, Transport, IP and Fixed Access, Deutsche Telekom

Introduction Deutsche Telekom is piloting TeraStream, an all-IP network that delivers triple play and other services from the cloud, as a model for nextgeneration operator networks.

TeraStream also is a proving ground for software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV), as Deutsche Telekom looks to automate and orchestrate cloud services to launch new revenue-generating services and adapt to customer needs more quickly.

Deutsche Telekom has partnered with A10 Networks to develop a carrier-grade, IPv4over-IPv6 `softwire’ solution as a virtualised network function, enabling Deutsche Telekom to differentiate and scale cloud services.

A10 Networks’ software-based and APIdriven architecture, commitment to open standards like OpenStack, and a willingness to create innovative solutions were key to helping Deutsche Telekom develop what is widely regarded as one of the most innovative service provider networks today.

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The challenge • Build a new, elastically scalable model for the core central-office data centre optimised for performance, low latency and cost • Deliver IPv4 services to customers in a native IPv6 network • Automatically provision IPv4 and other L4-7 services quickly and efficiently • Architect in compliance with core ETSI NFV documents • Maintain prime directive of simplicity and openness The results • Increased business agility with virtual carriergrade networking service and pay-as-you-go licensing based on A10 Networks’ cloud services architecture • Differentiated services on a per-subscriber basis • Reduced time-to-deploy IPv4 over IPv6 softwire service with highly responsive partners • Deutsche Telekom TeraStream Virtualises IPv4 Services with vThunder CGN

CASESTUDY

Hyper-connected Today’s hyper-connected world has not been kind to service providers. The demand for broadband has exploded, as customers want always-on connectivity for work and play, but don’t want to pay a premium for their growing bandwidth consumption. In fact, fierce competition among traditional telcos, cable operators and mobile operators is driving ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) lower and lower.

Capturing new market growth, such as overthe-top (OTT) video and cloud services, requires innovation and speed. Yet many service providers are hampered by the complexity of their networks, which drives up lead-time and cost, while their more nimble competitors and OTT service providers deliver services that are faster, cheaper and better. Traditional service delivery times, which require weeks or months to configure using conventional networking technologies, are no longer competitive.

Figure 1: TeraStream is a model for next-generation operator networks – an IPv6 network that’s built on an infrastructure cloud model.

Innovation and agility Deutsche Telekom is on the vanguard of this change. As a leader in next-generation operator networks, Deutsche Telekom is piloting TeraStream, an all-IP cloud-enabled network, at Hrvatski Telekom in Croatia.

In TeraStream, Deutsche Telekom says it has re-imagined the network to deliver all services, including voice, IPTV and Internet access, as cloud services that are provisioned on demand.

Deutsche Telekom has taken bold steps to fundamentally change how it delivers new services faster, at a lower cost and with a better user experience. TeraStream is an integrated packetoptical network that runs IPv6 in the core and is built on an infrastructure cloud model.

TeraStream has drastically simplified network

architecture and embraces the concepts of SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualisation), including software appliances, COTS (Common-Off-TheShelf) hardware, and automated provisioning and service orchestration.

“We designed TeraStream as an architecture that breaks many of the rules on the operator side,” said Axel Clauberg, Vice Present of Aggregation, Transport, IP and Fixed Access at Deutsche Telekom AG. “The attitude of ‘things-were-always-donethis-way’ doesn’t exist here. We questioned all layers and all protocols in today’s network, and asked ‘how would you run an efficiently managed IP network moving forward?’ We realised that if we truly wanted to change our cost base, we needed to change the mode,” he explained.

TeraStream is an open multi-vendor network, which allows for greater innovation and avoids vendor lock-in.

“It is really key for operators to build a foundation based on an open platform,” said Clauberg. “We don’t want a dependency on a single vendor in our critical infrastructure.”

TeraStream uses OpenStack for cloud orchestration, allowing it to control the compute, storage and network resources in its data centers, while empowering customers to provision resources easily. TeraStream virtualises network functions so they can be chained together to create customized communications services quickly and as needed.

Virtualising network functions As an IPv6 network, TeraStream does not have native support for IPv4. Yet it must still deliver IPv4 as a service to its customers to support legacy applications.

“There is an expectation that IPv4 traffic will go down significantly by the end of the decade, but we’ll need to deliver that function for some time,” said Clauberg. “Producing IPv4 as a service is ideal, because we can react based on our current load and we don’t need to drastically overprovision the way you might in a physical appliance scenario.”

The TeraStream team looked for a partner that could drive a scalable, virtualised Softwire encapsulation service in its data centres.

There are multiple ways to transport IPv4 traffic over IPv6, and the team considered Mapping Address over Port (MAP) as well as Lightweight 4 over 6 (LW4o6), an emerging IETF standard that’s an extension of Dual-Stack Lite (DS-Lite). In DS-Lite, address translation is done at the operator, while LW4o6 moves this translation to the customer premise equipment.

The team decided that the LW4o6 approach would scale more efficiently and allow tenants to be managed individually.

The search for a virtualised Softwire solution led the TeraStream team to A10 Networks.

NETWORKS IRELAND 43

CASESTUDY

“We were looking for a partner who could develop LW4o6 softwires and prove that it works,” said Clauberg. “We felt there was common ground with A10 Networks,” he added.

A10 moved quickly to implement LW4o6 in its Thunder Series CGN, and TeraStream deployed vThunder as a virtual service. With vThunder, TeraStream has a high-performance, highly transparent and scalable solution for its customers, which is delivering a strong return on investment.

The Thunder CGN product line is part of the A10 aCloud Service Architecture, which enables

Figure 2: TeraStream is a proving ground for network functions virtualisation. It uses Lightweight 4o6 softwires to elastically scale the delivery of IPv4 traffic to customers.

cloud operators to dynamically provision Layer 4-7 tenant services while improving agility and reducing cost.

In addition, aCloud on-demand licensing helps operators in providing cloud services consistent with cloud consumption model. The aCloud Services Architecture integrates with OpenStack, SDN network fabrics and cloud orchestration platforms, so operators can dynamically deliver application and security services and policies per tenant.

Automation through OpenStack and integration with aCloud on-demand licensing makes it possible to turn up new services for customers as they are needed, and tear them down once they’re no longer needed.

A10 tuned vThunder to use LW4o6 and deliver optimal performance, scalability and automation, which allows TeraStream scale elastically to support more customers and to deliver a better experience.

“When you virtualise a network function coming from hardware, there is a lot of potential for optimisation and automation,” said Clauberg.

“A10 was very helpful to optimise the performance so we could serve our customers without burning hardware resources,” he added.

Clauberg went on to say that IPv4-over-IPv6

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Softwire is the first example of a high-volume, data-plane-oriented network function that was virtualised.

“When people talk about NFV today, they are focusing on the control plane, not the data plane.

But if we truly want to change our cost basis, we have to look at virtualising network services also touching the data plane,” he explained.

A business model built for the cloud TeraStream is taking advantage of A10’s Pay-asYou-Go licensing model so it can offer on-demand cloud services to customers on a subscription basis.

With the Pay-as-You Go licensing model, TeraStream can offer and deliver IPv4 and other advanced L4-7 networking tenant services with automated metering, reporting, billing and license management, as is necessary in a cloud environment.

“A10’s pay-as-you-go licensing is key,” said Clauberg, adding that a flexible licensing scheme is win-win, because it makes the vendor profitable and it makes us profitable.

About Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with over 142 million mobile customers, 31 million fixed-network lines and over 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2013).

The group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business and corporate customers. The CSP is present in around 50 countries and has approximately 229,000 employees worldwide.

The group generated revenue of 60.1 billion euros in the 2013 financial year - over half of it outside Germany.

About A10 Networks A10 Networks is a specialist in application networking, providing a range of highperformance application networking solutions that accelerate and secure data centre applications and networks of thousands of the largest enterprise, service provider and hyper-scale web providers around the world.

The company’s products are built on our proprietary Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS), a platform of advanced networking technologies, which is designed to deliver substantially greater performance and security.

A10 Networks software based ACOS architecture also provides the flexibility that enables A10 Networks to offer additional products to solve a growing array of networking and security challenges arising from increased Internet cloud and mobile computing. Founded in 2004, www.a10networks.com

Mafi Mushkila, the leading provider of data centre services, offers a wide range of rack mounted and floor standing load banks and server emulators designed to test electrical and cooling systems in a controlled environment.

In order to ensure that new data centres can handle the demands placed on them and keep on delivering for the duration of their operational lifespan it is necessary to thoroughly test the infrastructure before it goes live.

Carrying out these tests with servers can be costly and potentially damaging to the equipment which is why heat load banks and server emulators are so popular with data centre operators around the globe.

The Mafi Mushkila rack mounted single phase emulator is available as a 2kW variant or as an impressive 3.75kW unit. One of the most powerful rack mounted heat loaders on the market, the 3.75kW emulator boasts a 230v 50Hz single phase input, a power input of 3.824kW, a heater power of 1.875kW/3.75kW (switched) and an

airflow volume of 241l/s. A rack mounted single phase 2kW load bank is also available and, as with all rack mounted systems in the range, can be fitted to any industry standard 19 inch rack, occupying 3U of space.

Mobile racks are offered in 12, 16 and 30U sizes and allow the load banks and server emulators to be installed in various configurations to meet capacity, density and rack layout requirements.

Mafi Mushkila floor standing single phase 2kW and 3kW units or three phase 9kW, 15kW and 22kW offerings are ideal for use in data centre spaces, particularly colocation facilities, where racks are often not installed until the customer makes a final decision on their infrastructure needs.

All units can be supplied on a rental only basis or as part of a managed load testing service package which offers installation, management of the load banks for the duration of the testing period and an uninstall at the end.

Tel: +44 (0) 1243 575106 or +44 (0) 8703 832339 email: davewolfenden@mafi-mushkila.co.uk web: www.mafi-mushkila.co.uk

CASESTUDY

Tapping into the power of cloud computing

Enhancing Cloud

Interconnectivity

Outsourcery discusses the challenges with cloud connectivity

Introduction Latitude 91 supplies IT services through its subsidiaries, SkillSet and Polar Moment, to a wide range of customers in both the private and public sectors. Many of these organisations are household names and some have been customers for more than 20 years. The group specialises in payment systems, software development and eLearning.

With offices in the UK and the Czech Republic and a team of 40 employees who mostly work

46 NETWORKS IRELAND

remotely, Latitude 91 provides IT services to global clients across a number of markets including finance, media, oil and gas, retail and pharmaceutical.

Teamwork Latitude 91 aims to provide a premium service for its clients, delivering strong performance and productivity to drive business growth.

Operating across three brands which each provide specified IT services, Latitude 91 has employees

CASESTUDY working from a number of locations, so efficient communication is key to overall performance.

Paul Deed, Director at Latitude 91, explains: “We have a team spread across Europe with consultants working at customer sites, from home and on the go. Staying on top of things as a business requires us to be in regular contact with different teams and individuals. When we are providing an IT service for a customer, we need to ensure we are communicating during every step of the process. We also need a degree of flexibility within our own business IT and telephony systems, as we sometimes need to modify the number of telephone accounts we use, depending on the number of people that we need to stay in touch with at any given time.”

Before approaching Outsourcery, Latitude 91 had a telephony and email system that was outdated and the company wanted to modernise in order to continue increasing the efficiency of its processes. As a reputable provider of IT services, Latitude 91 makes it a priority to continually review and improve the way it delivers high quality service to clients.

As Deed says: “We were managing our communications system through an old telephone provider and an Exchange email system, which required employees to use multiple accounts to stay connected. This proved to be a costly process and we needed to reduce spend. In order to reduce these costs, filtering down the number of telephone accounts we were using was key, along with having a well-functioning up-to-date system that could be flexibly interlinked with employee IT profiles in order to drive company performance.”

Business needs A move to a new office gave Latitude 91 the opportunity to look at incorporating a new communications solution, in order to make cost savings and to enhance connectivity, collaboration and business performance. After careful consideration of all the options, Latitude 91 decided that Outsourcery’s Unified Lync was the best solution to meet this business need.

Deedl explains: “We evaluated replacement traditional telephone systems as well as other offerings for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) from a range of potential suppliers. One of those was Outsourcery, who provided us with an initial consultation that involved a comprehensive review of our business objectives, analysing which solutions could work best for us.

“We eventually decided that a hosted Lync offering would be the best option for our business as it would help improve productivity, solve connectivity issues and immediately help to reduce expenditure,” says Deed.

As experts in cloud services built on the Microsoft cloud platform (as both a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Partner and part of the Microsoft Cloud OS Network (COSN)) Outsourcery was well placed to deliver a suitable solution. As Outsourcery is a provider of a range of hosted

Microsoft solutions, including Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, Exchange, Office 365 and Unified Lync, it was able to use the experience gained from working closely with Microsoft applications to advise on Latitude 91’s implementation from a place of confidence.

The Lync solution which Outsourcery was able to implement for Latitude 91 is based on Microsoft’s Lync offering and delivered on best-of-breed HP hardware, providing a single platform for users to communicate with contacts anywhere in the world, within a secure and scalable infrastructure. The service is built on Outsourcery’s O-Cloud platform and offers the added functionality of enterprise-grade, Ofcomregulated telephony that can entirely replace a PBX system.

Unified Lync from Outsourcery also enables users to productively host voice and video conferencing along with business-class instant messaging, all fully integrated with other Microsoft applications, to streamline working process - all features that would benefit Latitude 91 and its diverse employee and customer base.

Outsourcery’s O-Cloud infrastructure allows users to access Lync anywhere, so individuals can work efficiently from anywhere, reducing the time and cost associated with business travel, again making it the perfect solution for global business Latitude 91.

infoburst Latitude 91 - the client...

Support According to Deed explains the details of the solution within Latitude 91: “Outsourcery combined the Exchange email solution and Lync offering, deploying them on one cloud platform for our business. We received full support from Outsourcery, right from the initial consultation through to migration. The support has been ongoing too - we recently worked with Outsourcery to upgrade to the latest product set.

We expect to be working with Outsourcery for many years to come,” he explained.

“Outsourcery’s Unified Lync has proven to be a significantly cheaper and more productive alternative to our legacy telephone system.

The ability to communicate anywhere with the O-Cloud infrastructure allows us to maintain good connectivity with customers and employees alike, supporting our overall business performance,” he said.

“The combined hosted Lync and Exchange solution is particularly useful for our consultants who work away from the office on a regular basis and want to keep up-to-date at all times. Officebased employees use handsets and conference phones, with individual Direct Dial In (DDI) and voicemail identification, which further improves communication and identification with clients that require more interaction,” he added. www.latitude-91.com www.outsourcery.co.uk

NETWORKS IRELAND 47

ITSYSTEMS

xxxxxxx

Converged Building Infrastructure:

It’s a Journey, Not a Destination Wally Blennerhassett explains the complexities of converged building architectures...

By Wally Blennerhassett, Sales Director at CommScope

devices. When disparate systems are operated within a building there can be dozens of different cable types that must be supported, making upgrades and administration challenging.

Efforts by cabling standards committees to develop guidelines around a common, converged platform are realizing success as real convergence has gained traction. And while the rate of convergence accelerates, it will take time for all building applications to migrate onto a converged platform.

There are several reasons for the advancing rate of convergence within the building including: development of applications standards, disruptive technologies that have enabled applications to move to low voltage and increased requirements for environmentally sustainable buildings.

The migration of enterprise applications onto a converged cabling platform has been the source of discussion for nearly three decades, with ongoing predictions that it is just “two to three years away.”

Seasoned veterans in the IT industry often point to the fact that in the past, Voice and Data networks functioned over different networks managed by different departments, and now are converged to operate on the same device.

Convergence of enterprise networks, which are typically managed by separate IT and Facilities organizations, has proven to be a bigger challenge. It involves a multitude of applications operating within a building including: security, access control, HVAC, BMS, lighting, paging, signage, voice, data and more. Each of these may have their own network hierarchy, communications protocol and preferred cabling type, making convergence a bigger challenge to implement.

Along with the other benefits associated with IT and Facilities convergence, one key advantage is the use of a single medium – twisted pair cabling – that can be used to interconnect and power all

48 NETWORKS IRELAND

New Applications Standards Many new applications under the IEEE 802.3 and 802.11 umbrellas support enterprise building environments.

10GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3an) standards were completed in 2006, and the equipment and cabling technology has matured to the point that it provides the lowest cost solution for deploying 10G Ethernet up to 100 meters. Category 6A cabling supports 10GBASE-T and provides the added benefit of being able to provide low voltage power to the end device.

The latest draft Power over Ethernet standard, P802.3bt, will increase the power level to the end device to at least 49 watts. This will drive convergence as devices that previously required separate power and communications cabling can now provide both over twisted pair cabling.

Studies have also been done regarding cable heating and bundle sizes, with Category 6A cabling showing better performance based on better heat dissipation.

Trends such as BYOD have driven the need for ubiquitous in-building wireless LAN and mobile coverage. To keep ahead of this demand, the IEEE 802.11 committee published its fifth wireless LAN standard, 802.11ac, ultimately requiring backhaul speeds of nearly 7 Gb/s.

ITSYSTEMS In-building mobile wireless coverage has also become a concern. With coverage from the macro network struggling to keep pace with mobile data traffic and coverage issues created by the increasing use of energy efficient glass in buildings, indoor systems are being increasingly deployed. New in-building wireless technology now uses the same twisted pair cabling infrastructure, further driving convergence.

These two wireless applications have been driving requirements for Category 6A cabling.

Disruptive Technologies The initial BAS cabling standards focused on the convergence of low voltage systems over twisted pair cabling. Since then disruptive technologies, such as LED lighting, have enabled applications that historically required separate AC power to operate over low voltage DC infrastructure.

One of the inherent advantages that LED lights have over traditional fluorescent lights is that they require significantly less power, and can be controlled over the same cabling powering them. Traditional lighting can have up to three cabling overlays: an AC mains cable for power, low voltage cabling for control and additional low voltage cabling for dimming. LED technology has advanced to the point that LED lights can be powered, controlled and dimmed over twisted pair cabling. The cost of LED lights continues to drop.

Sustainable Buildings Environmentally sustainable buildings are now being mandated through the European Construction Product Regulation, 305/2011, and rated by programs such as BREEAM. In the UK, there is increased urgency around sustainability because buildings are mandated to meet stringent energy efficiency requirements under the European Energy Building Performance Directive, 2010/31/EU, and the European Energy Efficiency Directive, 2012/27/EU. An integrated approach operating on a converged cabling platform simplifies and reduces the cost of achieving these challenging goals.

There is a growing recognition that an IP-based integrated approach is the most cost effective way to achieve optimal energy and operational efficiency. Operating over traditional twisted pair cabling, these systems have the advantage of operating over a common platform where they can share information and base operational decisions on a holistic view of the building environment, its occupants and indeed the external environment. This type of micromanagement of the environment would be very difficult, if not impossible, over disparate systems. In addition, twisted pair systems support communication and power over the same infrastructure, greatly reducing the cost of sensors and actuators throughout the building.

In essence, while sustainability is often referenced as the driver for increased integration, as a means to reduce energy consumption and

cost, the increased productivity and security of the building occupants may actually provide greater cost savings.

Converged in the Ceiling Along with the key issue around why convergence has finally started to take off, there is also the issue of where that converged platform is being deployed. While the original convergence of voice and data occurred at the desktop or floor, convergence now occurs in the ceiling.

Wireless LAN relies on access points in the ceiling, which are cabled back to equipment rooms. Given the increasing adoption of wireless LAN, an overlay cabling grid as recommended in ISO/IEC 24704 and TIA TSB-162-A should be considered for every new installation.

Additionally, in-building cellular and Tetra coverage - which has traditionally required large coaxial cables - can now be achieved over Category 6A and fiber infrastructure.

Similarly, lighting, security and sensor technologies are all ceiling-based and can make use of the same grid layout.

Conclusion After many false, starts we have undoubtedly reached an inflection point where true integration is now possible. This integration will open up vast opportunities to improve working environments, security and improvements to operational and energy efficiency. This integration will see an explosion of cabling in the ceiling as the twisted pair infrastructure is required to support cellular, WiFi, lighting, BMS, CCTV, PA and an ever increasing list of devices.

As we move to a world where almost every service within a building will be dependent on the twisted pair network, that physical infrastructure is in essence becoming the nervous system of the building with consequent heightened importance.

The criticality of this physical network will see the increased need for intelligent management to provide essential security and reliability. We have undoubtedly entered a new and exciting integrated world within the building. This new world has its challenges but it brings with it vast opportunities to positively impact the world we live and work in. www.commscope.com

NETWORKS IRELAND 49

OPINION

How the Class system is now dead

Optical Fibre Cabling Futures In The Spotlight Mike Gilmore looks at the evolution of fibre optic cabling...

By Mike Gilmore, DIRECTOR standards@fia

Introduction Those readers who are au fait with ISO/IEC 11801 and EN 50173 standards for generic cabling design will recognise the concept of cabling “channels” and “links” and the application of the term “Class” when referring to the requirements that apply to those channels. *Class has been applied to copper since the earliest editions of the standards and was extended to optical fibre cabling in 2001/2002.

However, it has always been a bone of contention that the application of Classes to optical fibre was not directly equivalent to its use for copper and was recognised as the best of a lot of worse solutions.

Finally, it has been agreed to remove the optical fibre Classes from the next generation of the standards - unless someone comes up with a better idea which fixes the problems of the existing solution.

To explain the fundamental problem with the optical fibre Classes we have to review the multiple functions of the cabling Classes. Its first objective was for each Class to define a performance envelope within which one or more network applications could be grouped.

If we look at the copper Classes, any application of Class D would operate over a Class D channel. As each Class (A to FA) is hierarchical, a Class D would also support applications of Class A, B and C. As new applications were developed we had to create new channel Classes such as Class EA to support 10GBASE-T. New Classes On the odd occasion we drifted away from this concept by creating new Classes to reflect the then “state-of-the-art” cabling. Examples of this were Classes E, F and FA. This resulted in Classes without an application mapping - but this it not a fundamental flaw of the Class system.

However, one critical feature of the copper Class concept was that the performance envelope was length independent - instead the performance envelope was defined by

50 NETWORKS IRELAND

transmission parameters such as attenuation, NEXT and return loss. By comparison the optical fibre Classes were defined by attenuation and, indeed, by length. We started with OF-300, OF-500 and OF-2000 into which the existing applications were grouped and for which there was a hierarchy with OF-2000 applications being able to operate over OF-500 channels. So far so good!

However, the reader might be encouraged to ask why, if copper channels were not length dependent what made it necessary to use length for the optical fibre equivalent?

The answer is that the primary length dependent transmission parameter for optical fibre is bandwidth and it is very difficult to measure accurately for installed cabling. As a result the application standards bodies such as IEEE had never specified a requirement - instead they had specified how far the application would operate over an optical fibre of a known bandwidth. So OF-300 applications were those that were stated as being supportable over 300 metres.

Equally importantly, because the applications standards bodies had not defined bandwidth requirements, the Class of a given application had to be product specific - so 1000BASE-SX was a Class OF-500 application using OM2 50/125m optical fibre but was in the OF-500 group for the OM1 equivalent. This is wholly contrary to the copper concept where the Class is component independent.

The second intention was for each Class to define a performance envelope to assess compliance.

Copper channels are assessed against a limit for each of the necessary transmission parameters e.g. a maximum attenuation 24 dB at 100MHz for a Class D channel. However, optical fibre channels are required to be design-compliant i.e. the limit depends on the length and the number of splices and connections within the channel. www.fia-online.co.uk

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STRUCTUREDCABLING

Simplifying the networking selection process

Too Much Cabling Choice

Can Be A Bad Thing Ken Hodge explains the nuances of structured cabling system choices...

By Ken Hodge, CTO, Brand-Rex

Spoilt For Choice?

Dining out can be a challenge. Too much choice on the menu is as unwelcome as too little, and much the same distress awaits anyone faced with the task of selecting structured cabling systems.

But there’s no need to make a meal of this because Ken Hodge, CTO of Brand-Rex, is here to simplify the selection process…

For thousands of smaller LANs (local area networks) there is unlikely to be a need for data speeds greater than the one Gigabits per second (1Gb/s) used by modern PCs and laptops during the cabling system’s lifetime.

For such networks Category 5e (sometimes referred to as Class D) is both cost effective and technically adequate.

Category 5e is also the ideal choice for shortterm networks. For example when a company takes on a two or three year lease on a building for expansion, or during renovations so that staff can be ‘shuffled’ around. Think also of the great ‘Portakabin cities’ that appear on major construction sites. These are rarely around for more than a few years.

Safe and sure If you’re deploying a new network for your enterprise, it’s a long-term investment for let’s say seven to fifteen years. But if you don’t foresee the need for data speeds over 1Gb/s in that timeframe then Category 6 is only a little more expensive and has what’s known as ‘headroom’ – effectively safety margin – compared to Category 5e. The upshot of this is that it’s a safer long-term choice.

For ten years forward thinking network managers have been ‘future-proofing’ their networks by installing cabling networks capable of 10Gigabits per second (10Gb/s).

These were people who strongly suspected that their user communities would need 10Gb/s data speeds during the lifetime of the network.

And they were right. Because now 10Gb/s switches are readily available, plus many servers

52 NETWORKS IRELAND

infoburst Complex networking the norm in most installations...

STRUCTUREDCABLING

have 10Gb/s interfaces and - following the release

by Intel of its ‘on-motherboard’ 10Gb/s Ethernet chipset - I think that it will only be a short time before desktop PCs and Laptops sport 10Gb/s interfaces too.

Category 7 is effectively obsolete. Category 7A is overkill in most situations and is looking highly unlikely to be capable of 40Gb/s, so it doesn’t offer the next ‘future-proofing’ option.

This leaves only one option for 10Gb/s – Category 6A (Class EA) which was designed specifically for 10Gigabit Ethernet.

Grab your shield All of the cabling categories come in two flavours – shielded and unshielded (UTP). So which do you need?

With Category 5e and Category 6 it is really a matter of personal preference. Shielded is however technically superior wherever the site is electrically ‘noisy’.

When it comes to 10Gb/s Category 6A systems however, most users and consultants are tending towards the shielded option. Thinner shielded cables are easier for installers and engineers to work with and they have immunity to electrical interference.

So, in the majority of cases, shielded is the safer option for 10Gb/s.

Data centre LAN Avoidance of downtime is absolutely key – requiring the cables and connections hardware to have far higher physical and mechanical quality and reliability. Transmission quality is paramount too.

And in the data centre everything is squashed close together so higher density solutions are essential.

Data centres also are the most demanding in terms of data speeds. The need to transfer data rapidly between switches, servers and storage meant that in data centres, 10Gigabit speeds were needed long before the electronic interfaces for category 6A were available.

Other cabling systems and electronics were used, optics and twinax. For the very short distances – a maximum of 15 metres – twinax links cost ten times more than Category 6A. Now that Category 6A interface electronics are available, Category 6A is the preferred choice for all links needing up to 10Gb/s. Indeed it is specified in all of the data centre design standards* as the minimum level to use.

For speeds higher than 10Gb/s in the data centre LAN, the fibre options we’re about to discuss under the data centre backbone heading can be used.

Data centre backbone At data speeds up to 10Gb/s, a fibre link consists of two fibres regardless of whether you are using single-mode or multi-mode. But as we move to

infoburst Multiple connectivity options need careful labelling...

the higher speeds needed by many servers, for the ‘aggregated’ traffic between switches in the data centre and out to the wide area networks (WAN) this changes.

Single-mode fibre can carry up to 100Gb/s (potentially faster) using only one pair of fibres per link.

But the standards, which have been developed for multi-mode fibre, require eight fibres per link for 40Gigabits and twenty fibres per link for 100Gb/s.

You might assume from this that one pair of single-mode fibres would be the best solution since it will work from 1Gb/s right through to 100Gb/s without any modification. And indeed it is the most elegant solution from an engineering perspective.

But of course Murphy’s laws still apply – and the cost of 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s opto-electronics for single-mode are, and seem set to remain, more expensive than the multi-fibre multi-mode optoelectronics for 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s.

Unless you decide that you can afford to go for the technically elegant two-fibre single-mode approach - do you: (a) Install just two multi-mode fibres per link for 10Gb/s then take these out and replace with eight or twenty fibres per link when you upgrade the active equipment to 40Gb/s or 100Gb/s? (b) Do you install eight or twenty fibres per link now but just use two now?

Or (c) find some alternative that gives a planned migration path without disruption and downtime?

There is also an issue of connector types to consider. Currently the favoured fibre connector for data centres is the high density ‘LC’ type.

For eight or twenty fibres then a multi-fibre connector type MPO (multi-fibre parallel optics) is needed. The basic MPO type has a higher

NETWORKS IRELAND 53

STRUCTUREDCABLING next two or three years then 20 fibre multi-mode or 2-fibre single-mode are your only options and you might as well install them straight away.

But - and this is currently only a maybe - it is looking possible that on a five year time horizon 100Gb/s could be re-engineered to an eight fibre Base 8 format. In which case the same eight fibres could carry 40Gb/s or 100Gb/s giving a great future-proofing capability.

All this means that installing eight or planning migration to eight is possibly the most cost/ future-proofing balances for the majority of new enterprise backbones.

insertion loss and doesn’t really support multiple patching point topology needed for full flexibility.

Whilst MPO comfortably supports 2-connector links a very high performance variant of the MPO, called the MTP® connector, – allows the user to configure between four to six connector pairs in the network, allowing cross-connect topologies to be used.

There have been a few products launched recently which properly embrace the need for networks to be migratable from 10 to 40 and possibly 100Gb/s.

One – called ‘Base-8’ because of the 40Gb/s need for eight fibres – simply formats LC connectors together in physical groups of eight – at both ends of the links.

As soon as you need to connect some 40Gb/s equipment instead, a new patch cord with eight LC connectors at one end and a multi-fibre MTP connector at the other will allow the connection of a 40Gb/s server or switch port. So in seconds you’ve transformed from 10Gb/s to 40Gb/s.

Other modular alternatives exist like those shown in the diagram – which allow fibre patchpanel modules to be changed quickly from LC to MTP types when the need for 40Gb/s arises Also allowing lots more 40Gb/s circuits to be installed within the same patching space.

Enterprise backbone Historically, fibre was the only real choice for enterprise backbones. But a lot of enterprise backbone links are under 100 metres – and for these, 10Gb/s over Category 6A copper cabling will now become a cheaper option.

For networks with Category 6A – allowing 10Gb/s to the workstation - it follows that the backbone links will need to operate at faster speeds to accommodate the aggregated traffic.

For these, multi-mode fibre with the Base-8 and LC to MTP interchangeable patching modules will be one of the best options.

Eights into twenty You may have noticed in both data centre and enterprise backbone sections I didn’t talk about the upgrade to 20 fibres for 100Gb/s.

That’s because if you need 100Gb/s in the

54 NETWORKS IRELAND

Conclusions Structured cabling is decidedly ‘horses for courses’ and not ‘one size fits all’. And while I hope I have helped to de-mystify the topic and bring you right up to date there is no substitute for getting a highly knowledgeable consultant or one of the top-tier manufacturers to help you make the best choice.

This is because, at the end of the day, your company will have to live with your decision for a great many years. And the cost-plus disruption of having to re-cable too early is massive.

Enterprise Ireland case study Introduction As the government agency responsible for the development and promotion of the indigenous business sector, Enterprise Ireland has a mission to accelerate the growth of world-class Irish companies in global markets with a view to increasing national and regional prosperity.

“With the very intense demand on our network bandwidth, we are always looking for a standard’s based Class EA/Cat6A system with associated full guarantees,” says Aidan Ryan, IT Project Manager, Enterprise Ireland.

With an extensive network of 10 Irish and 31 international offices, Enterprise Ireland works with local businesses to assist them to compete and to grow. Key areas of focus for Enterprise Ireland and its clients are research and development together with technological innovation, business development and internationalisation.

When Enterprise Ireland decided to consolidate its four Dublin offices and two data centres into a new headquarters based in The Plaza at East Point Business Park, it was essential that it had a high performance, reliable and robust technology and communications infrastructure.

A key consideration in the supply of a structured cabling infrastructure for its new headquarters was performance and reliability, together with backwards compatibility and full interoperability. www.brand-rex.com www.rwl.ie

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