R&M and FNT make data centre cabling management easier

Today, the average data centre surface area measures 1,000 to 2,500 m2 and has thousands of network ports. Cable management is more important than ever to avoid data transmission errors, performance issues and downtime.

Monday, 25th April 2016 Posted 8 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Specialized solutions that can monitor all changes to a physical network, including switches, servers and patch panels, are essential. Ideally, this type of system should also offer functions for mapping, managing, analysing and planning cabling and network cabinets, including asset management, planned and unplanned changes and alarms.

Total solution

At this year’s NetWork’16 forum in Leipzig, R&M and FNT announced a joint integrated data centre solution which meets these requirements. This offering is an integration of R&M’s RFID-based cable tracking solution, R&MinteliPhy, with FNT Command‘s data centre cable management solution through API integration.

Information gathered from R&M’s RFID sensors flows into FNT Command software, providing a consolidated view of all cabling and port data. R&MinteliPhy monitors and sends data to FNT Command regarding:

· Real-time physical connectivity monitoring and documentation, which R&M’s sensor collects from RFID-tags on the cabling connectors

· Alerts on unsolicited changes for greater security

· Trending and alarming related to port capacity

At the same time, all work orders from FNT Command’s work order management can be sent to R&MinteliPhy for visual guidance, task tracking, and permission configuration.

Complete control of complex environments

“Capacity management in the data centre is becoming an increasingly important topic for infrastructure and operations managers,” explains said Dr. Thomas Wellinger, Market Manager Data Centre at R&M. “The impact poor connectivity visibility can have on data availability or uptime brings the topic of automation of connectivity documentation onto the task list - whether from an availability, operations, risk or compliance perspective. This combined solution empowers infrastructure and operational decision makers to make critical capacity and compliance decisions to increase data centre efficiency.”

"AIM systems are another important component for automation in the data centre," adds Oliver Lindner, Head of Business Line DCIM at FNT. "For the software-defined data centre on the logical level, we also need appropriate agile methods on the physical level aiming at continuously supporting changes."

The integration of R&MinteliPhy and FNT Command will be presented at the forthcoming NetWork'16. The forum for service and infrastructure management in IT and telecommunications is specifically aimed at managers looking for future-proof solutions for their data centres. "