Power Strips: Upgrading from Basic to Intelligent Cabinet PDUs-Quickly

Tuenti, a Spanish language social networking site, started in 2008, has experienced a heavy increase in subscribers.  During their original solution development, they selected APC racks and HP blade servers with the capability to supply both 16 and 32 Amp feeds to their racks.  However, they did not consider power distribution and management as a requirement and settled for basic (home use) power strips.

Tuenti quickly discovered that they had power distribution problems that were resulting in frequent downtime from the power strips.  There was no way to accurately see if a circuit was going to be overloaded, locked up devices remained locked, there was no redundancy if a power source was lost, and after hours issues couldn't be resolved since the data center is not a manned 24/7.  Being a social networking website, these urgent problems required a solution-- fast.

Server Technology was able to provide an onsite survey within 4 days of initially being contacted, and a power distribution solution was determined.  A free evaluation unit was delivered to Tuenti's facility within 10 days of initial contact, and the full order was received shortly thereafter.

The product selected to resolve this crisis:

CW/CX-24VE-XXX (16 & 32 Amp) Sentry Switched CDU

The CW-24VE (Switched Cabinet Power Distribution Unit, PDU) provided network power monitoring and control of outlets via a single IP.  This gives them the ability to see the power draw on each circuit.  This will allow them to properly load the rack without fear of an overload.  They also purchased two environmental sensors per Cabinet PDU as well because each intelligent Cabinet PDU has the built in capability to support two humidity and temperature measurements.  Now they have the ability to see their power, and set outlet states to on, off, or reboot based on the desired state of the device.  They also gained the ability to set SNMP based alarms based on user defined thresholds for power and environmental conditions.

Since the upgrade, the customer has experienced increased up-time.  The implementation of Switched Cabinet PDU's has resolved their critical issues.  Server Technology has one focus, power distribution, and our expertise resulted in a quick, timely solution.