ADC KRONE FiberGuide eliminates risk of fibre damage in the Data Centre

Released: March 2009

A complete range of products gives carrier-grade protection to business-critical optical fibres

Optical fibres are widely used in today’s data centres to carry high bandwidth, business-critical data streams. One result of this is that if the fibre suffers damage, it can take out critical systems, causing massive disruption and potentially enormous costs associated with the resulting downtime.

Yet despite this, fibre is frequently simply placed under the floor along with copper data and power cables. These are much heavier and less fragile than fibre, so the risk of damage to fibre when it is fitted under floor is considerable.

To solve this problem is a key purpose of ADC KRONE’s FiberGuide^®, a comprehensive suite of optical fibre management systems originally designed to protect fibre cables in a telecom carrier environment where outages due to fibre damage are unthinkable. FiberGuide completely segregates fibre cables from other cables and ensures correct bend-radius management at all times. FiberGuide can be installed underfloor alongside copper data and power cables, where it can be fitted with lids to ensure the sensitive and fragile fibre patch cords and cables are never accidentally stood upon.

A superior approach where the fibre can be completely segregated is to run FiberGuide above the cabinet, as is usually done in the carrier environment. This totally segregates the sensitive fibre away from the heavier underfloor cables, which eliminates the risk of them being accidentally damaged. It also makes it far easier to run-in or re-route fibre jumpers when needed.

Another advantage of installing fibre overhead relates to cooling. In many data centre environments, underfloor space is limited. Particularly where bulky Category 6_A copper cabling is used, which takes up large volumes of space, air dams can be created, stopping cooling air reaching the areas where it is needed. Overhead FiberGuide installations remove the fibre cables from the floor space which can significantly reduce this problem.

By helping to increase airflow below the floor, overhead FiberGude, can significantly reduce the amount of cooling needed, and cut the electrical power required for driving the cooling plant. This has the twin benefits of cutting costs and reducing the data centre’s carbon footprint.

Removing no longer needed patch cords from a trunking/cable tray and cutting or joining the cable tray in order to take off a new branch for expansion or re-configuration can be a very dangerous exercise. Here, the risk of damage to many other fibre patch cords and subsequent service interruption can be unacceptably high. FiberGuide is specifically designed to allow extremely safe in-service moves, adds and changes, including the fitting of new branches with no danger to existing operational fibres. As you would expect from a carrier-grade product.

Speed of installation is critical in the data centre and FiberGuide is again specifically designed for this. For example, it is self-supporting, requiring far fewer ceiling fixings than any other trunking product. This reduces the need for time-consuming and expensive ceiling drilling. FiberGuide also features completely push fit assembly, requiring none of the gluing, or nuts and bolts, that many other systems require.

Because it was designed as a carrier-grade product, where the possibility of fibre failure is completely unacceptable – exactly as in any data centre – fibre protection and bend radius management is a top priority in the design of FiberGuide. The result is, it is impossible to exceed minimum fibre radii or to snag fibres.

The riser-guide version of FiberGuide for vertical deployment is ideal for routing fibre into cabinets and keeping them fully safe from accidental damage, bend radius protected, and separate from the copper – whether coming down from a FiberGuide above the cabinets or up from FiberGuide in the floor space.

Learn more at www.adckrone.com/

About ADC KRONE
ADC serves its customers as ADC KRONE in the Europe/Middle East/Africa, Asia, and Indo-Pacific regions of the world. ADC KRONE provides the network infrastructure equipment and services needed to deliver voice, video, Internet and data communications around the world. Wireline, wireless, cable, enterprise, and broadcast network operators rely on ADC offerings to deliver bandwidth intensive, high-speed services to residential, business and mobile subscribers. ADC (NASDAQ: ADCT) has sales into more than 130 countries. Learn more about ADC KRONE at www.adckrone.com.

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