The trend for high density connectivity in data centers makes cabling systems more and more complicated, which also brings the difficulty to cable management. There is no doubt that improper cable management can result in performance issues, such as data transmission errors, and even system downtime. Therefore, it is necessary to find effective tools to make tidy cabling. Fortunately, cable manager, or cable management panel, appears to be a great option. This article will introduce the advantages of cable manager and some common types of cable managers to you, which would be very useful for you to select the most suitable cable manager for your network.
Before we move to different types of cable managers, let’s have a look at the advantages of cable manager. First, with the use of cable manager, cables can be installed properly, which can avoid the risk of over bending. Second, Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) can be reduced to greatly improve network performance. Third, cables are organized tidily which is good for airflow. Fourth, the cost is affordable, which is a necessary investment to avoid unknown loss caused by cable mess in the future.
There are different types of cable managers which are classified by different standards, such as cabling direction, style, structure and material.
There are horizontal and vertical cable managers for different cabling directions. Horizontal cable manager is able to make proper and neat routing of the patch cables between equipment in racks. While before using it, the rack height and supported cable density must be determined. As for vertical cable manager, it is designed to manage patch cables in vertical space. When using vertical cable manager with angled patch panel, the cables are allowed to directly enter into vertical cable manager which eliminates the need for horizontal cable manager. This can greatly save rack space for other active equipment. No matter which type you choose, remember to leave some space in the cable manager for future growth and cabling demands. Here is a figure that shows the appearances of horizontal cable manager panel and vertical cable manager.
Finger duct cable manager offers a series of fingers on either side as well as pass-through holes at the beck. The flexible fingers allow easy installation and removal of cables; the holes can help to reduce the cable stress. From an aesthetic point of view, when mounted to the rack, finger duct cable manager can be used as a cover to create a clean look. As for D-ring cable manager, it can help to protect the cables and route large amounts of cables, avoiding cable strain. Being more flexible, those D-rings are allowed to detach and use separately as well as combine into other devices freely. If you want to know the structural differences of these two types of cable managers, you can learn it from the following figure.
Cable manager can be classified into single sided and dual sided types. Single sided manager provides a convenient cable run between equipment and racks, while dual sided manager supports patch panels by keeping different cables separate for better distinction. To better know these two types of cable managers, here offers a figure about the structure of single sided manager and dual sided manager.
Cable manager can be made of plastic, metal or semimetal. As plastic and metal are the two most common materials for making cable manager, the following will mainly introduce plastic and metal cable manager. Generally, plastic cable manager is definitely lighter in weight for easier installation. However, as time goes by, it will lose the shape, discolor and even degrade. While metal cable manager is more solid and can provide a stronger and safer cabling environment.
Cable manager is really useful for clean and tidy cable management and it is now widely used in data centers. If you want a higher performance of your network, a cable manager is absolutely needed. FS.COM provides different kinds of cable managers, such as, 2u cable management, single sided vertical cable manager, metal horizontal cable manager, etc.
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