In addition to choosing the type of cable, another important factor you should consider is the way you install and place the cables in your infrastructure. You should concentrate on three different areas for this:
- Cables connecting workstations: can go through the ceiling, in the floor, or on the floor
- Cables between floors: in case you have to connect devices located on different floors within a building
- Cables in the data center/server room: focus on cable management, as all the connections in the building are concentrated in this place and if cables are not tagged and placed in order this might create chaos; the high density of devices in the racks imposes proper cable management to avoid Layer 1 issues within the entire network
Cable placement becomes very important, especially if you mix different copper and fiber cable types. Copper cables are usually a lot heavier than fiber ones so if you have a large stack of copper cables, this might crush more sensitive fiber cables positioned below them.
During the installation process, you should consider the cable category you are using and the way this will scale in the future. Whenever possible, you should use the higher category available to avoid cable replacement with future network upgrades. For example, even if you only need Cat 5 upon installation, a wise decision would be installing Cat 6 cables to support future needs. It is very difficult to remove old cables and install completely new cables in a large building.
To optimize cable placement, the data center wiring plant needs to be centralized. This is usually placed in the middle of the data center to maintain minimum cable lengths. With this placement, you can easily distribute cables wherever you need to.
Various providers offer structured cabling systems that are suitable for large environments. Such a system includes passive components that organize and label cables at multiple points in the infrastructure. When using a structured cabling approach, this allows you to spend as little time as possible troubleshooting Layer 1 issues so you can focus more on the upper OSI layers during troubleshooting. An example of a structured cabling system is presented in Figure 18.3 below:
Figure 18.3 – Structured Cabling System