How to Rapidly Configure Intelligent Rack PDUs

Posted on August 4, 2019 by Gento

In the course of my consulting engagements with many enterprise clients, over the past few years I have personally configured thousands and thousands of intelligent power strips for network deployment. Since “site services technician” is not part of my job description, you might wonder if perhaps I just have too much free time.

Quite the contrary. Instead, Raritan created a means to configure intelligent power strips (set IP address, change time settings, set unique name, turn on SNMP, etc.)—in real-world environments—very rapidly and very easily. With minimal effort, a single person can configure hundreds of power strips in a single afternoon. The technique is unique and is likely surprising to most clients, so I’d like to take the time in this post to explain its methodology and rationale.

Many of our clients deploy significant quantities of intelligent power strips, in order to enable better energy management and capacity planning. Thus, Raritan is uniquely motivated to help deploy them quickly, because the value of the data provided by intelligent power strips can only be appreciated when the power strips are network-reachable. It pains me to visit facilities that have purchased networked power strips (of any brand), where the data center operators have not actually deployed their connectivity features due to reluctance to expend the tedious effort required to network them. These facilities are missing the tremendous business and operational value that metered pdus deliver.

Power Monitoring And Metering

Posted on July 27, 2019 by Gento

In the current digital age, it is expected that data centers will continue to rise in both power consumption and complexity. In fact, it is predicted that the use of data will grow to exceed 160 zettabytes by 2025.  As the age of big data continues to grow, the challenge for data center operators will be to discover how they support additional data, remain energy efficient, and ultimately reduce costs. Power monitoring and metering are the two key components that will help data centers succeed over the next decade.
 

High-Density, High-Power Rack PDUs With Sensors

Posted on July 27, 2019 by Gento

To date, the data center industry has had to become innovative as they seek to respond to the increasing demand for power. As part of their innovation best practices, forward thinking data center managers have turned to high-density and high-power rack PDUs with sensors. This technology is designed to help data centers become "green," reduce their carbon footprint, and effectively respond to the ever-increasing demand for power and density of IT equipment at the rack level. 

ASHRAE: Best Practices for Environmental Monitoring of Humidity and Temperature

Posted on July 27, 2019 by Gento

Data centers now consume an estimated 1.8 percent of electricity within the United States. As energy consumption has risen, so too have the associated costs. These costs, coupled with the fact that approximately 30 percent of data center servers are either idle or underutilized, have resulted in unnecessary expenses that could have been mitigated with the right environmental monitoring best practices. These best practices include monitoring temperature and humidity in accordance with ASHRAE 90.4. 

What Is ASHRAE 90.4 ? 

In its simplest forms ASHRAE 90.4 is a new standard that is designed to help data centers effectively monitor temperature and humidity levels so that downtime is reduced, and enhanced efficiencies can be introduced. This standard focuses on the use of on-site and off-site renewable energy. It uses both Mechanical Load (MLC) and Electrical Loss (ELC) to better determine the maximum allowable values for climate zones. At its core, ASHRAE 90.4 helps data center managers understand when they are undercooling their machines and operating at detrimental humidity levels, so that power utilization can be enhanced for the entire data center. 

Comparing Annualized and Peak PUE

Posted on July 27, 2019 by Gento

The Green Grid introduced the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric in 2007, and it’s currently the de facto standard for measuring a data center’s efficiency. The traditional method of calculating a data center’s PUE is to collect the required data manually and add it to a worksheet at predetermined intervals, whereupon an application calculates the PUE. A more advanced method of obtaining the PUE is to use intelligent rack PDUs that take the measurements and transmit them to a DCIM power monitoring solution that automatically calculates the PUE. Many data center managers are still unclear on what PUE is, how it’s calculated and what it’s used for. Most managers understand that their PUE should be as close to 1 as possible, but they may not know why this measurement is desirable.