However, there are many aspects of the infrastructure to consider when designing the overall connectivity says Derek Armer of Cooper Armer International Ltd., a structured cabling installation company that has provided the cabling systems for a considerable number of storage area networks.
, "Unless the SAN is comparatively small, it will require a significant amount of management which will be more easily accomplished by handling all of the routine connection changes at a central panel/s and very low attenuation may be achieved by maintaining a high degree of quality with fibre terminations.
However, the patch-panel approach does demand a higher level of skill from the installer, as Derek Armer
explains, "When a patch-panel is being considered, all of the associated losses of connectors, splices and cables have to be included in the design for a particular operating speed.
When choosing structured cabling, the first consideration is to establish the acceptable light loss budget for each fibre link, which in turn will depend upon the required data speed for the current requirements whilst remembering to build in future-proofing."
Fibre is the de facto for SANs, because of its inherent ability to carry large amounts of data.
However, fibre brings its own challenges, such as the need to avoid any particles of dirt on the fibre connectors during installation or misaligning the fibre in the connector, both of which could lead to a degradation in performance or even a catastrophic failure of the cable.
This is one of the reasons why Derek Armer
prefers to use connectors that incorporate dust covers (such as the 3M VF-45) and can be installed with minimal room for error.