INTELLIGENCE ON THE RACK Issue 4, June 2009
QUESTION Philip Petersen, CEO, AdInfa, asked: What do you think about “intelligent” power strips for data center racks? Do you have any?
I am doing some research
into intelligent power strips, or rack-mount PDUs – the kind that have built-in power metering and probably switchable outlets which can be controlled via SNMP (usually). If you do have any:
• Why do you have them and how many have you got?
• How do you monitor and manage them?
• How do you use the data you can get from them?
• Which brand(s) do you use and why?
ANSWERS Dan Lawrence, electrical engineer, SEG and owner, DJ Lawrence Consulting Engineer, said: Philip, from a design and engineering perspective, as one who designs the infrastructure and initial fi tup prep, the answer is not straightforward. It depends on whether the data center is a managed house or a co-location house, or a mix of the two. It should not make a
difference, but cost enters into the equation. If you decide to deploy intelligent strips, you should also include the monitoring packages that allow you to keep track of things from the NOC, or some remote site. There are several manufacturers that supply complete systems and a Google search is probably your best bet at this point, just to
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see what is out there. In my experience, this approach has been serving up some positive dividends to the D/C groups. The data streams received have been used mostly to generate work tags and predictive maintenance, and to monitor each circuit for chargeback systems to establish revenue streams in co-location facilities. If you deploy REAL smart equipment, you can also do some power quality analysis if necessary, in addition to just volts, amps and so forth.
Cyril Badol, director key accounts and LSG, Eaton Electrical, said: Eaton is manufacturing intelligent PDUs for data centers. The range that will probably fi t with your requirements is the ‘Managed’ ePDUs. Customised PDUs can also be designed.
Wael Dalati, business development manager, Nexans Cabling Solutions, said: We provide solutions for data centers such as Intelligent Infrastructure Management solution with Environmental Monitoring (including intelligent power strips). Please fi nd below the answers to your questions: We have intelligent power strips for data center racks as part of our offering for enviroment monitoring and access control. They can be monitored through a web interface using SNMP, or can be integrated as part of the Intelligent Infrastructure Management software (which is taking care of monitoring the physical layer/ data link layer/IP layer) in the
network.
The data we collect is monitored by an event monitoring system that can generate alarms when certain values exceed certain limits. We can use the data as an historical record to present the electrical consumption. Some power strips will have the capability to be managed remotely (like shutting down a certain power plug, for example, cold boot for a non- responsive server).
Alex Dolle, senior sales executive server technology, Servertech said: Since 1984 we have been manufacturing intelligent PDUs. We have some really fascinating, cutting-edge technologies we just released in the past couple of months, including power trending and monitoring down to the machine level on an individual outlet basis, while also maintaining full remote control.
Iyad Madanat, country manager, APC by Schneider Electric (GCC, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan), said: Rack PDU or, indeed, any intelligent NCPI device is as good as the brain that manages the whole NCPI (Network Critical Physical Infrastructure) and its ability to interact with the other management platforms that you have in a data centre; your Building Management System (BMS), and your IT Management Platform (for example, IBM Tivoli).
The main purpose is to be able to safely distribute power to your IT equipment by reducing the amount of cabling inside your data center. This is achieved by taking the power distribution unit into the rack, right next to your IT loads.
The added advantage of monitoring these through SNMP traps is that it enables you to measure in real time the power utilisation (currently measured in amps) on each circuit, receive alarms when this exceeds preset limits, and thus avoid a situation where you may have excessive current draw (think of changes
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A recent request for information on the DatacentreDynamics Linkedin discussion group gave one member numerous data to work with
Leviton FLX Series Rack Power Distribution Unit
in the physical location of servers, virtualisation, equipment upgrades, and so on) that could lead to an upstream circuit breaker tripping and powering off your rack.
On management software, APC also provides a solution that enables you not only to monitor and manage all the installed NCPI equipment (power, cooling and security equipment), but also to keep track of changes in the capacity and the physical location inside your DC. You can check these out here:
http://www.apc.com/ products/category. cfm?id=7&segmentID=3
Simon Rohrich, owner / inventor, Elliptical Mobile Solutions, said: I am not really a vendor of remote PDUs, but we use them extensively and recommend their use to clients selecting components in our self- contained modular data centers. We use information from the
intelligent PDU to adjust server load, cooling and airfl ow. We can do this because our enclosures are micro-managed known environments unto themselves and the power consumption translates into a well-defi ned heat load within a closed loop cooling system. They are interconnected to form an energy effi cient enterprise data center. On the administration side, they
can automatically power cycle a hung server without anyone ever opening the enclosure, driving to a remote site, logging work hours, breaching security, unplugging the wrong power cords, and so on.
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