More with Wireless

Swen Anderson
July 6, 2010

Green IT is the focus of attention these days all around the globe. Managers of big Data centers play a leading role in the adaption and implementation of processes, tools and devices that support the objective of becoming “green”. They start changing their power infrastructure in order to show the energy consumption in the Data center and generate power usage charts on rack level or even server level by measuring and logging data over a long time. Reasons for this new behavior are very complex. On the one hand there are new rules or laws forcing Data center Managers to save energy and reduce the Carbon footprint. Others simply want to save money by saving energy. A third group of Data centers are looking for a solution to exactly measure the power consumption so that these costs can be billed to their customers. Last but not least there are efforts to fully use the capacity of a Data center and thus postpone expansions or moves and, again, save money – all not possible without an active and intelligent energy management system.

Raritan is extremely focused on these efforts. With our intelligent power products we provide solutions for our customers which help them to comply with the above described requirements. However, this confronts our customers with the problem of transmitting and finally storing data generated by intelligent energy management solutions. For our customers this means they have to provide IT communication and storage infrastructure and embed it in existing infrastructure. We have learned that this task is a quite challenging logistical issue for many customers since it requires a smooth cooperation between IT Managers and persons in charge for Facility.

One possible and promising approach to solve this problem would be to provide our customers a pre-configured communication technology and necessary storage. Of course, such a solution must comply with many different requirements. First, it shall guarantee a secure and uninterrupted data flow. But it shall also be easy to install, even in existing Data centers. A solution using cables does not really meet these demands. The costs for installation and maintenance would simply be too high for our customers compared to the saving they gain with the power management.

Therefore Raritan has been studying and testing solutions for wireless data transmission in Data centers for a while. The request from a larger customer for exactly such a wireless communication infrastructure has proven this initiative right and helped Raritan to realize the first large installation of PDUs with wireless communication technology. The technical hurdles which had to be taken were not insignificant but they allowed Raritan to create even more customer friendly power technology and increase the technical advance compared to competition.

So please stay tuned for the announcement of new Raritan products with wireless communication technology support.

Swen Anderson