OFC/NFOEC Data Center Cabling Short Course (SC358)

I'm headed to LA next week for OFC/NFOEC and my first order of business will be to teach a short course on transitioning your data center from copper to fiber. Here's a short description of what I'll discuss:

This short course is intended to help data center and network managers understand the value proposition of an all-optical data center. Topics that will be discussed include looking at basic data center network infrastructure design and hardware needs.  The course was developed with the TIA-942, Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers in mind, but will also address the fact that many data centers really have not used this standard in practice. Networking standards such as IEEE 802.3, Fibre Channel, iSCSI and InfinBand will be reviewed along with their applicability to certain aspects of the data center. Technology roadmaps and data center networking trends will be included as well as how to handle transitioning from lower to higher data rates within your data center. When it makes sense to implement fiber optics and what types of transceivers and cabling should be used for different scenarios will be presented. Other technologies such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet, RDMA (InfiniBand) over Converged Ethernet, IO virtualization and how virtualization and network consolidation will affect data rates will also be discussed. Detailed cost analysis of fiber versus copper in the data center will be presented considering not only equipment and infrastructure cost, but port and cabling density, power and cooling costs.  Also included will be analysis of whether it matters what vertical market a data center supports – for example, does a financial sector data center have different requirements than a higher-education data center? Several real-world case studies will be presented.

Hope to see you there.