Challenges in Data Center Interconnect (DCI) Installation

The scale of data centers is expanding to provide optimal performance to meet increasing demands. Because of these demands and other factors such as real estate constraints, power consumption, and latency issues, data centers are shifting to a more distributed model. Therefore, the number of data center interconnects is increasing but the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) system will require a high cost to achieve good performance.

400GBASE-ZR (400ZR) technology is expected to reduce the cost for DC operators because 400ZR does not need the installation of WDM systems including transponders. However, DC operators are required to guarantee the performance by themselves as the maintenance of several WDM components such as 400ZR transceiver becomes their responsibility.

> Details: White Paper explaining about 400ZR

DCI Deployment Process

Challenge 1: Need to guarantee the performance on 400ZR by DC operators themselves

The deployment of 400ZR network contributes to a reduction in costs, while DC operators need to guarantee the signal quality of their network equipment. For example, before introducing 400ZR transceivers which can switch an optical wavelength, DC operators should confirm that the optical wavelength keeps within the specific channel bandwidth. And then, the Ethernet frame test is required.

Challenge 2: Require easy and efficient installation procedure

DC operators need to establish a procedure that enables their engineers to easily operate and test transport performances in 400ZR optical networks. This is because DC operators themselves must construct their network and guarantee the quality of the communications in their networks.

Solution 1: MT1040A and MS9740B support for confirming the performance at transceivers, communication networks, client servers

MT1040A directly connects to a 400ZR transceiver to provide a quality testing environment for 400ZR DCI network. In addition to the standard Ethernet frame testing to confirm the bit error rate and the number of TRx frame, the MT1040A can import the monitored values of the quality of communications and display them on the screen. And then, an optical spectrum analyzer MS9740B measures and confirms that the output power, wavelength, and signal bandwidth meet the required network specifications.

Solution 2: Efficient automated on-site testing by MT1040A

The automatic test scenario for 400ZR on the MT1040A makes it easy to perform the test described in Solution 1 above.

Since the automated testing using a scenario displays on-screen operation guidance, even operators with only minimum training can test easily without operation errors.

> Click Here to Watch the Video of Automated Testing

Watch the video to learn more about the automated testing compare with the manual testing.

Using the automatic test scenario decreases the number of operations by 60% compared to manual testing.

In addition, using the test scenario facilitates accurate and efficient testing of 400ZR networks.

> Click Here for the Details of Automated Testing

> Click Here to Get the Automatic Test Scenario