Data Center Global Telecommunications Cabling Standards Landscape and Latest Developments Jonathan Jew - J&M Consultants, Inc. Chair TIA TR-42.6 Telecom Administration Vice-chair TIA TR-42.1 Commercial Buildings Co-chair BICSI Data Center Subcommittee Vice-chair USTAG ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 25 WG 3 Interconnection of IT Equipment

WHY USE DATA CENTER TELECOM STANDARDS?

Point-to-Point Non-Standard Cabling Unorganized, Single-Use

Structured Standards Based Cabling - Organized, Reusable, Flexible

Standard/Structured vs. Proprietary/Point-to-Point Cabling Better availability Saves money Faster deployment Support for multiple current & future protocols

What are the standards? ANSI/TIA-942-A Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers (US, approved April 2012, published Aug 2012; Addendum 1 approved Feb 2013, available now) CENELEC EN Information Technology – Generic Cabling Systems Part 5: Data Centres (2007, European Union). Addendum 2 approved for publication in 2012 ISO/IEC Information Technology – Generic Cabling for Data Centre Premises (2010, international). Addendum 1 approved for publication in 2014 ANSI/BICSI-002 Data Center Design and Implementation Best Practices (2011, international). Revision in progress (~2014).

New standards & updates BICSI, ISO/IEC, CENELEC, and TIA are all very busy revising and developing new standards They work in conjunction with each other and organizations such as IEEE

BICSI-002 Data Center Best Practices ANSI/BICSI-002 Data Center Design and Implementation Best Practices Standard Developed by 150+ committee members worldwide (mostly users, engineers, consultants) Meant to supplement, not replace existing data center cabling standards by ISO/IEC, CENENLEC, TIA, and others Under revision expected late 2014/early 2015 Large document (~400 pages) covering a wide range of subjects - electrical, mechanical, architectural, fire protection, security, structural, commissioning, telecom, etc.

TIA-942-A-1 Data center fabrics Switch fabrics provide high-bandwidth any-to-any connectivity required for cloud computing Fabrics can and should be built using the standards based cabling More cabling and higher bandwidth needed for fabrics than traditional switch architecture Traditional 3-Tier Fat-Tree / Leaf & Spine Switch Fabric

Balanced Twisted Pair Cabling Cat 5e & 6 for 1 Gigabit Ethernet to 100 m Cat 6A, 7, or 7A for 10G Ethernet to 100 m ISO/IEC requires and other standards recommend Cat 6A minimum Cat 8 in development for 40GBase-T up to 30 m (adequate for 80% of server connections); 25Gbase-T also under consideration From Flatman_01a_1112 ngbt link lengths report to IEEE NGBase-T study Group Nov 2012 Switch-to-Server Link Length% of data center links 30 meters80% 40 meters90% 100 meters100%

Optical Fiber Cabling Laser optimized 50/125 um multimode fiber (OM3 or OM4) less expensive than single- mode fiber for lengths <=150 m 40G uses 8 MM fibers and MPO connector 100G uses 20 MM fibers and either two 12 fiber MPOs or one 24 fiber MPO connector 4-lane/8-fiber 100G (Mar 2015) will cost less, use less power, and is expected to support at least 70m over OM3, 100m over OM4.

Optical Fiber Cabling 16-fiber and 32-fiber MPOs being developed by TIA (TIA FOCIS-18) More efficient use of fibers for 40G & 4-lane 100G which use 8 fibers (12-fiber MPOs have 4-unused fibers) 400G Ethernet will probably use 32 multimode fibers

Summary Standards-based structured cabling optimizes cost, flexibility, and availability Standards are continuously updated: – CENELEC: European Union – TIA: US, Canada, and US-based companies outside US – ISO/IEC: most other countries BICSI standards are international best practices that work with other standards Consider future needs to support 10/40/100G and data center fabrics needed for clouds – Cat 6A, 7, or 7A for balanced-pair cable – OM4 for multimode fiber terminated on MPOs (with multiples of 8 fibers) New 4-lane 100G Ethernet (Mar 2015) New Cat 8 / 40GBase-T (Feb 2016)

Thank you Jonathan Jew President J&M Consultants, Inc. Co-chair BICSI data center subcommittee – Co-editor TIA-942-A, Editor TIA-942-A-1 Chair TIA TR-42.6 telecom administration subcommittee Vice-Chair TIA TR-42.1 commercial building cabling Editor ISO/IEC TR telecom administration identifiers US National Committee Project Manager ISO/IEC data center standard Data Center & Administration Section Editor – ISO/IEC cabling planning & installation

Supplementary Information

Differences between standards TIAISO/IECCENELEC Balanced Pair backbone Cat 3 min Cat 6A recommended Cat 6A, 7, 7ACat 6, 6A, 7, 7A Balanced Pair Horizontal Cat 6 min Cat 6A recommended Cat 6A, 7, 7ACat 6, 6A, 7, 7A Multimode Fiber OM3 min OM4 recommended OM3 minOM2 min Coaxial cable734/735 coaxNone MMF connectorLC for 1 or 2/port MPO for 3+/port LC for 1 or 2/port MPO for 3+/port LC or MPO SMF connector at EDA LC for 1 or 2/port MPO for 3+/port LC for 1 or 2/port MPO for 3+/port LC-PC SMF connector at Entrance Rm LC for 1 or 2/port MPO for 3+/port Angled-LC

ISO/IEC Category 8 ISO/IEC TR – Balanced cabling for 40Gbps channels – ( ) meant for IEEE Characterizes 30 meter channels (26 m with 2x2m patch cords) to support 40 Gbps using existing Cat 6A, 7, 7A, and new Cat 8.1 and Cat 8.2 components Cat 8.1 for Class I channels is backward compatible with Cat 6A Cat 8.2 for Class II channels compatible with Cat 7/7A IEEE 40GBase-T target is 30 m for Cat 8, unknown for Cat 6A, 7, 7A Parallel effort in TIA underway

Ethernet channel lengths over multimode fiber Fiber Type 1G10G40G100G # fibers OM1 275 m26 m--- OM2 550 m82 m--- OM3 800 m300 m100 m 70 m* OM m550 m150 m 100 m* Distances in red are specified by manufacturers but not in IEEE standards. *IEEE 802.3bm Standard for 4-lane 100G target 1Q2015

BICSI-002 Subjects Covered Site Selection Architectural and Structural Design Electrical Systems Mechanical Systems (i.e., HVAC) Fire Protection and Security Building Automation Systems Commissioning Maintenance

BICSI-002 Subjects Covered Telecommunications – Access Providers & Entrance Facilities – Telecom Spaces – Cabinets & Racks – Cabling Pathways – Telecom Cabling – Field Testing – Telecom Administration Information Technology