TMR trusts in tML® for the expansion of their data centre
Telekommunikation Mittleres Ruhrgebiet GmbH, or short ‘TMR’, the leading service provider for the Mid-Ruhr area, has been offering a wide range of telecommunications services to carriers, corporations and private clients for more than 15 years. TMR is a joint venture of different parent companies – including energy supply companies in Bochum, Hattingen, Herne and Witten as well as Banks from Bochum and Herne. TMR owns more than 600 km of separate copper cable networks and 600 km of optical fibre networks as well as coupled fibre-optic lines to many urban centres in the Ruhr and the Rhineland and to nearly all major telecom carriers. TMR’s data centre comprises an area of 1,000 square meters and includes offices in the same building.
As all server cabinets available were rented out to customers and thus the capacity of the TMR data centres was exhausted, the TMR data centre in Bochum had to be expanded in 2011. TMR was looking for a pre-terminated and space-saving cabling system, which could be neatly and easily installed and – due to its pre-termination – featured a low error rate. In addition, a high port density per rack unit had to be implemented in a mixed system of copper and fibre ports within one patch panel as TMR wanted to optimally use the available space to offer their customers as much space as possible.
„In the counselling sessions tde convinced us due to their immense competence as well as an immediate understanding of our needs and the requirements of our network,“ said Thomas Neumann, Head of Internet/IT services/Data Centre at TMR. Additionally, further advantages were decisive in TMR’s choice for the tML®-system, according to Neumann, namely the production in Germany as it enables short delivery periods compared to Asian or American manufacturers, and the attractive price-performance ratio of the tML® components.
In the scope of the data centre expansion with an additional 23 19" racks tde was in charge of the product assortment prior to the order, the pre-fabrication of the wiring and the supply of the components. After the cabinet manufacturer Rittal had assembled the racks, TMR themselves carried out the installation of the cable trays, the installation of the patch panels into the racks and the Plug-and-play installation of the pre-assembled tML-trunk-cables.
„It was the right decision to use the TML system and we would definitely use it again at any time,“ said Thomas Neumann and adds: „I can only recommend every data centre operator to use pre-assembled, modular cabling systems such as tML® systems and to keep one’s hands off classical single wiring with Cat.5/6/7 installation cables. They simply fail to meet the needs of modern data centre environments due to the fact that they require too much space as well as manual effort in their installation and maintenance.“