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We’ve Cut the Cables to Intelligent PDUs

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Gento

Here at Raritan, we’re very excited to announce our new Wi-Fi data center solution - the first to enable intelligent rack PDUs (iPDUs)  and telemetry sensors to communicate over regular, 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless connections.  Considering that typical equipment racks have two PDUs apiece for power redundancy, this is great news to anyone designing data centers: they’ve just lopped the cost of pulling Ethernet cable off their power management budget.

It’s also great news for anyone in an existing data center who wants to make the switch to intelligent power distribution or add environmental monitoring to their remote operation. Raritan intelligent PDU sensors can track temperature, humidity, airflow, and air pressure readings remotely.  Again, no Ethernet cost; no new switches or cables to find space for.

When you replace that cabling with an antenna and a set of wireless access points in the ceiling, you’ve opened up some great new possibilities for DCIM while reducing your deployment cost.

And your security remains tight. Admittedly, there’s no way to lock doors or build physical fences around a wireless network - most wireless waves propagate a fair distance, depending on the frequency at which they operate.  But that physical cable occupies only the bottom layer of the OSI seven-layer model. Between the basic hardware layer and the top, application layer, there are opportunities in all of the other layers to insert effective obstacles against interception or spoofing.

Secure Power Management, Environmental Monitoring - Without Stringing Cables

Just think about a firewall, one like we all have in our homes or businesses. That firewall is designed to prevent a malware attack of some sort from getting into your network physically. But if someone inside your company wants to do harm, that firewall is irrelevant. The person inside the company is also inside the firewall. So in order to protect your network from the inside, you need things that operate at the data and application layers, like authorizations, permissions, authentication, and data encryption to keep your data secure.  Our new wireless channel now does all that, restricting access to the right people. It also encrypts the information so that someone can’t just set up a wireless scanner to listen in or pick up passwords.

Generation 2 Raritan intelligent PDUs. An opening to go wireless

When we went to the Generation 2 models of our intelligent PDUs two years ago, we added USB-A and USB-B ports. (In fact, we’re the only PDU manufacturer to date that has done this.) Then we designed a cable to plug into that port, run up to the top of the cabinet, and accept a USB Wi-Fi antenna - one of our own make. This gives us control of the communication protocols. That way, we know that it operates on 802.11a, b, g and n.  In other words, it operates with whatever wireless access points the customer already has or wants.

Learn more about Raritan‘s Wi-Fi solution. Click here.

Further Reading

ComputerWorld Article

DCD Dallas on December 11th - Limited Number of Complimentary Passes Available

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Gento

Raritan has a limited number of free passes for end users only.  Contact Dorothy Ochs at Dorothy.Ochs@Raritan.com to take advantage of this offer.  And don’t forget to stop by our booth for your chance to win an iPad and see our smart rack.  Raritan’s smart-rack management solution consisting of:

- A rack controller and/or intelligent rack PDUs with sophisticated controller boards which support power metering and control at various levels
- Environment sensors such as temperature, humidity, air pressure and airflow
- Other sensors such as contact closure and webcam
- Electronic asset tracking
- KVM for remote management of devices
- Energy management and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software

Hope you can join us in Dallas!  For more information about DCD Dallas, visit http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/conferences/2012/dallas-2012.

Unique Data Center Energy Management Solutions

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Gento

According to a recent New York Times article, U.S. Data Centers consumed 76 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010. At the Green Data Center Conference in Santa Clara, there was a great deal of discussion on data center energy waste. But there was more on just how far data center managers are willing to go to make their data centers more efficient without sacrificing performance. Raritan has several inventive solutions to achieve this.

Solutions to optimize comatose servers

One of the main issues data center managers want to solve is how to manage their servers so they’re not running when they’re not needed. It’s a knowledge and management issue. In fact, comatose servers are one of the largest wastes of energy in the data center. Kenneth Brill of the Uptime Institute estimates that 15% - 30% of data centers’ servers could be turned off.

Raritan’s Power IQ, when coupled with our intelligent Power Distribution Units (iPDUs), helps you identify under-utilized infrastructure so you can save energy. The solution gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase “knowledge is power.”

Over-provisioning of power and infrastructure

• 99.5% SLAs.
• Complaining end users who have come to expect an “always-on” readiness.
• Demanding industries like finance and gaming where transactions happen in milliseconds and nanoseconds.

In the face of end-user demand, try telling a data center they can’t over-provision.

Over-provisioning power supply to data centers is simply standard practice. Data center managers know it’s the only way to keep up with service level expectations and to manage spikes in traffic.

Or is it?

When data center managers have granular data down to the outlet level, and have the software to make sense of all that data, they’ll begin to see where energy capacity is stranded and can be better used.

What data center managers need is a tool set to visualize the data center from an asset standpoint - how much capacity any particular device is using in real-time. Such a solution would allow them centralized monitoring, email notifications, graceful OS shutdown, outlet control, powerful analytics of your costs, line capacities, carbon footprint and rack temperature.

Capacity vs. Consumption

As you probably know, most colocation facilities charge customers for energy by the capacity they provide rather than the real-time consumption per month or per year. Because of this, the customers say “Well, if I am paying for a certain capacity, then it’s up to me to utilize as much as possible so that I don’t leave any money on the table.”

Raritan has a solution for customers in this situation. We created power strips that will be rated for the maximum available rating allowable for each particular need. Meanwhile, most of the industry has chosen to stay under a certain rating to minimize the PDU cost. What it leaves the customer with is a less than optimal solution. Raritan’s solution gives data centers the maximum rating regardless of the capacity needed. It’s within ANSI guidelines and comes in at a reasonable price. Also, this eliminates the need to create more cabinets in the data center or in the colocation facility and saves a considerable amount of money and effort.

Large deployments of iPDUs

If your data center embraces all of this and suddenly decides to install hundreds, or even thousands of iPDUs, you could have a real mess of credentials, unique policies and alerts. Raritan came up with a simple way to help:

A USB Stick.

You provide the USB stick with a list of PDUs and power strips and their corresponding credentials and policies.

One of your techs goes to each PDU, plugs this USB stick into them and the PDU will read what’s in the stick and configure itself with the required credentials.

When an iPDU is configured correctly, we put a smiley face on the screen so you know it went well and it took the right credentials.

Further Reading

Bill Brill Interview - WallStreetAndTech.com

Energy Star Data Center Energy Efficiency Initiative

New York Times - Data Center Energy Waste

Raritan will be unveiling an industry-first DCIM solution at next week's Gartner Data Center Co

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Gento

We are inviting you to see our new solution.  Stop by Raritan’s booth #711 to learn how to simplify and reduce the cost of instrumenting your data center for DCIM.  Intelligent PDUs and environmental and electronic asset sensors now can be added to racks without investing the time and cost associated with running wired Ethernet connections.

We will also be showing how our DCIM solutions can help you monitor energy, capacity, assets, and the overall health of your data center.

Visit gartner.com/us/datacenter to register now with priority code DCSP5 and receive a special $300 discount.

We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!

力登实验室服务器管理解决方案—远程服务器管理

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Gento

很多公司都在实验室对硬件和软件产品进行开发、测试和评估。那么，您如何保持实验室7X24全天候的备用状态呢？即时您不在实验室，也是如此。虽然实验室对整个公司的运营起着至关重要的作用，然而实验室管理却是一项巨大的挑战，远程访问则是其中一个关键的部分。

力登的实验室服务器管理解决方案为随时随地（不论是实验室、办公室、在路上或是在家中）的服务器管理和控制，提供远程和本地BIOS级别的访问，从而最大限度地降低了基础设施以及相应的管理成本。实验室管理员可以轻松地重启、修补或更新服务器，从而降低了出差成本，提高工作效率。

对于那些不需要24x7全天候运行的实验室来说，则希望将电力成本降至最低。力登的调度功能可以使服务器在晚上断电，早上恢复通电。此外，通过 自动配置，实验室经理可以快速、智能地放置实验室设备，并确保准确的资产跟踪，从而降低了手动流程和操作的成本。

请联系当地的授权经销商或访问我们的网站，了解更多关于力登实验室服务器管理解决方案如何助您扩展业务的资讯，网址如下：https://www.raritan.com/ap/cn/contact。

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