Modular Patching Solutions for Flexible Cable Management

As is known to all, data center cable management is not that easy. If the cables are not managed well at first, managing the cables will be a nightmare at last. So how to quickly and effectively manage your data center cabling in the beginning would become particularly important. Modular patching solutions are practical ways for great capacity cabling management. Fiber enclosure, MTP cassette and fiber adapter panel play important roles in the modular patching solution. This post will talk about cable management with modular patching solutions.

Key Components: Fiber Adapter Panel, MTP Cassette, FHD Fiber Enclosure

 

Preloaded with fiber adapters, the fiber adapter panels serve as the intermediate connection between the backbone and the patching cabling. The commonly used fiber adapter panels are LC fiber adapter panels, SC fiber adapter panels and MTP/MPO fiber adapter panels. In the previous post “Type A MTP Cassette and Type B MTP Cassette: When and Where to Use?”, I have talked a lot about MTP cassette. So here I’m not going to talk about it in detail. As for the fiber enclosures, take FS.COM fiber enclosures (FHD-1UFCE, FHD-2UFCE, FHD-4UFCE) for example, these three types of FHD fiber enclosures are with the size of 1RU, 2RU and 4RU respectively. Made of black powder coated SPCC rugged heavy-duty steel, the FHD fiber enclosures are designed with push/pull out functions, and have flexible mounting options, which are suitable for 10G/40G/100G cabling deployment.

 

Solution 1: MTP Cassette With FHD Fiber Enclosure

 

FHD-1UFCE fiber enclosure can hold up to four MTP/MPO cassettes, FHD-2UFCE fiber enclosure eight MTP/MPO cassettes, and FHD-4UFCE fiber enclosure twelve MTP/MPO cassettes. Matching with 24-fiber MTP LC cassette, the maximum fiber counts of these three FHD fiber enclosures are 96 fibers, 192 fibers and 288 fibers. Can you imagine how much valuable space they can save for you in the data center? The following picture demonstrates the well organized cabling in modular system.

 

Solution 2: Fiber Adapter Panel With FHD Fiber Enclosure

 

In addition to housing MTP/MPO cassettes, those three FHD fiber enclosures can also hold the fiber adapter panels. When holding adapter panels, there are some differences with holding MTP/MPO cassettes. Besides housing the exact same number of fiber adapter panels, the FHD-1UFCE fiber enclosure can also hold two fiber slack management spools or four optical splice trays. And FHD-2UFCE fiber enclosure can hold two fiber slack management spools or eight optical splice trays, while FHD-4UFCE fiber enclosure can hold two fiber slack management spools or twelve optical splice trays. If choosing to use fiber slack management spools, they can help to manage the cables. If choosing to use the optical splice tray, they can help to store the spliced fiber pigtails.

 

Two Patching Solutions: When to Use Each?

 

Both the two fiber patching solutions talked above would definitely save your data center space or installation time. Which solution to use depends on your special network deployments. If you need to connect your backbone MTP cabling with the standard patch cables, using the MTP/MPO cassette with fiber enclosure would be a good choice. If simply connecting the fiber patch cables, using the fiber adapter panels with fiber enclosure would be more suitable. No matter which solution to use, undoubtedly they provide high density flexible system for managing fiber terminations, connections and patching in data center application to maximize rack space utilization and minimize floor space.

Note: If using FHD fiber enclosure with MTP/MPO cassette, fiber slack management spools or optical splice trays cannot be installed inside the enclosure.

Originally published: www.fiberopticshare.com/modular-patching-solutions-flexible-cable-management.html