The Raritan Blog

What’s One Leading Cause of Data Center Downtime? It’s You.

Michael Bord
December 18, 2013

“To err is human, to purr is feline.” – Robert Bryne

One look at Switch’s SuperNap data centers is all it will take to convince you of the importance of color-coding within your own data center.   Switch has assembled the world’s largest data center campus, serving the enterprise needs of over 500 clients, from startups to Fortune 1000s from its secure 2.2. Million square foot campus in Las Vegas, Nevada.

With so many clients around the world relying on Switch to securely host their business services and provide near real-time results, the company can scarcely afford for any of its millions of servers to experience downtime due to power outages.  But, this begs the question, how might one reduce or eliminate power outages altogether?

Recent data center industry reports suggest that an overwhelming number of data center power outages are attributable to human error caused by mislabeling PDU racks, or being unable to identify problem areas.  It’s a finding that underpins the need for a solution like color PDUs and cables that can help data center staff to avoid outages due to careless mistakes.

Need proof?  Visit Switch’s SuperNap data center gallery to see how Raritan’s Color PDUs and SecureLock™ cables are being used in a live data center environment.   And, download a copy of Raritan’s 5 Great Reasons to Use Colored Rack PDUs to safeguard your data center from outages that could inadvertently be caused by you.

Data Center Airside Economizers and Humidity

Greg More
December 10, 2013

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) publishes recommended ranges for temperature (65 degrees to 80 degrees F, 18 degrees to 27 degrees C) and relative humidity (20% to 80%).

One of the best ways to understand the relationship between temperature and humidity is to look at a psychrometric chart. The bottom of the chart is dry bulb temperature meaning air containing no moisture. The scale on the right of the chart is the amount of moisture in pounds contained in a pound of dry air. The curves running through the chart are the relative humidity (RH) from 0% to 100%. The temperature scale along the 100% RH curve is the wet bulb temperature.

An Unexpected Data Center Planning Issue

Minder Singh
December 5, 2013

USnews.com published a fascinating article this week, “Some NSA Opponents Want to ‘Nullify’ Surveillance With State Law”

A group called OffNow plans to turn off the water supply to the Utah Data Center being built for the NSA. Their intention is to use local community law to make life difficult for the local center. After all, when you park a data center in a county, it needs electricity, water, sewer connections, and roadways. Local governments control these services. It could be argued that local governments have less political diversity of opinion. They might be easier to sway.

OffNow’s website refers to a local water supply as the NSA’s Achilles Heel. It’s the perfect description. A massive data center could be crippled because they can’t get something as simple as a water connection. Short of trucking the water in, there’s really no way around it — they can’t lay water pipes through the county. They won’t even be able to drill a well without a local permit.

This isolated event raises the specter of political guerrilla tactics in the control of data

These days, we’re surrounded by more and more polarizing events. Now, companies and governments must plan for future issues that could unite a local community or action group against their data center.

Local companies helping to build the NSA’s data center could find themselves facing a boycott. But this kind of action likely won’t stop there. Consider how OffNow’s actions could inform other action groups:

• An online furrier hosted in a particular data center could lead to action against that center
• Political candidates could come under attack. Most don’t even know where their data is hosted
• Energy companies, foreign governments, all must consider where their data is hosted and the possible implications

Just when you thought data center planning couldn’t get any more complicated.

Data Center Management Changes for 2014

Joel Bryan
December 2, 2013

Macro changes in the data center and how it will effect your business in 2014.

Many businesses are considering moving some or all of their data center infrastructure to colocation. If your company is considering such a move, then granular information about your data center is critical.

Server Huggers in a Changing Data Center World

Minder Singh
November 27, 2013

This past week, while prepping for an interview with Ron Vokoun of JE Dunn, he used a funny phrase that struck us as timely:

Server Huggers, (noun): IT professionals who dread moving their IT infrastructure off site for fear of losing control.

Ron’s phrase reminded us of a previous interview that discussed the inevitability of change in self-managed data centers among mid-size companies. In that interview, Joel Bryan, Global Customer Support Manager at Raritan, discussed how data centers must continue to expand in size over the next few years to accommodate increased enterprise demands. Mid-size companies generally move IT infrastructure into colocation facilities for the following reasons:

• Excessive Cost
• Complicated Expansion
• Long Setup Time

When experts in a colocation facility manage your infrastructure, you have infinite room for growth, can set everything up in the click of a button, and spend less for it.

Still, one can understand the need to keep your eye on critical equipment.

To help server huggers cope with separation anxiety, Raritan offers highly effective and innovative tools for remotely monitoring and managing your servers that will give you the confidence to let your servers live a little further away from home.

And when the racks in that colocation facility are fitted with Raritan iPDUs and coupled with Power IQ power management software, you can watch the power efficiency – i.e. health - of each piece of your equipment down to the outlet level.

You can let go now, Server Huggers. We’ve got you.

Read about Raritan’s Data Center Change Management solutions at this link.

Read about dcTrack®, Raritan’s award-winning, easy-to-use data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution that is great for change management in the data center

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