Network infrastructure specialist Siemon has installed cabling solutions in the 3,500m² MainOne data centre located just outside of Lagos, Nigeria
The 600-rack facility is the largest co-location facility of its kind in West Africa and delivers consistent high-level performance, data storage and data security to support leading businesses from across the region.
MainOne is the only data centre in West Africa built to Uptime Institute Tier III specification, which guarantees 99.98 per cent availability and means no more than 1.6 hours of downtime per year. Fully compliant with the TIA 942 data centre standard, Siemon"s high bandwidth cabling systems ensure that MainOne has the most solid and future proof cabling infrastructure foundation to support its growing customer base.
"To successfully establish a facility of this scale, it was crucial to select top quality products from best-in-class suppliers," commented Gbenga Adegbiji, head of capital projects at MainOne. "We needed to specify products that would fully support applications today and well into the future to allow for growth and expansion, and we chose Siemon to enable us to achieve these important objectives."
Siemon and its certified installed partner, Lagos based DBH Solutions, collaborated on the process of designing the cabling infrastructure, which comprises the high performance XGLO fibre optic solution with OS2 singlemode and OM3 multimode fibre, and the Z-MAX end-to-end Category 6A shielded copper cabling system.
Ideal for next generation backbone applications, XGLO exceeds all ANSI/TIA/EIA and ISO/IEC insertion loss and return loss requirements to provide MainOne with 10Gb/s performance and beyond. Meanwhile, the Z-MAX shielded system combines consistent best-in-class performance with security and robust noise immunity to easily support 10Gb/s. It also provides the highest margins on all performance requirements for Category 6A/Class EA, including critical alien crosstalk parameters.
A combined total of more than 2,400 XGLO optical fibre links, using 1,200 pairs of OM3 and 1,200 pairs of OS2, were installed for the backbone infrastructure, which connects every cabinet to Cisco Nexus 7000 series core switches located in each of the two main network rooms. Z-MAX was used to connect servers and work area outlets to access switches and, given the challenging schedule, it provided significant advantages in terms of product handling and ease of installation.
"We are confident that with the high performance Siemon cabling solutions we have deployed in our state-of-the-art facility, we will be able to provide quality and reliable services to our customers," said Funke Opeke, CEO at MainOne.
Steven Foster, managing director at Siemon EMEA, observed, "The availability of high performance data centre facilities in West Africa is critical to its ability to achieve future growth and profitability. MainOne is setting the standard in this region and we are pleased that our technology is playing a critical role in supporting the development of the digital economy in this rapidly developing part of the world."
