Rack PDU Blog

The idea that standardization benefits those of us in the data center space is neither new nor difficult to grasp. Data center standardization is a reality that directly supports the uptime goals of your organization. This applies wherever your PDU(s) are operating, like a colocation facility, corporate data center, or hyperscale complex. You may wonder, then, how PDU power factors into this equation, let alone a small receptacle tucked into a PDU at the back of a rack?

In our previous post on intelligent PDUs, we dedicated a blog to defining what it means to be an intelligent PDU. In this blog, we will discuss one of the characteristics of intelligent PDUs in more detail: data center environmental monitoring. Intelligent PDUs provide the support network that gives more rack-based data. In addition to power quality or capacity data, intelligent PDUs can be outfitted with data center environment sensors that collect additional information required for the management of the data center. Besides power, feedback on the operation of the cooling system is of utmost importance, but so is the physical security of the rack itself.

With all of the talk in the industry about intelligent PDUs, sometimes referred to as Network PDUs or IP power strips, this blog will seek to provide some basic information to help the reader understand what exactly they are.

nd here we are, another year under our belts. Almost. As we head into the last month of 2018, it is time once again to take a moment from our regular blog posts to reflect and give thanks. It has been a great year not only for Servertech, but for technology in general. It would be insincere to pretend otherwise: we just love technology. Not only are we a company of dyed-in-the wool, full-on electro-dorks, but we have a little love affair with the technology that we power, too. We spent some time this week musing about what our ServerTech PDU’s are doing out in the world, and it occurred to us that they may just be powering some of the most amazing technological advancements that took place in 2018.

If you have landed on this blog and were looking for sports awards, corporate awards, and recognition products, you are in the wrong place. Unless, of course, you want to see the Server Technology trophy case, which is quickly being filled by our team of engineers.

In our previous post “So, What Is an Intelligent PDU?” we provided some clarification to what can be thought of as a broad a category of products, all of which have a network connection in common. An intelligent PDU is a basic PDU with a network connection. And like most general categories, there are subcategories that bear some discussion. As we defined it in the last post, an intelligent PDU does two things: first, the network connection provides data feedback on the operation of the unit; second, the network connection provides the ability to control the operation of the unit remotely. From these two features come the two major subcategories in the intelligent PDU world: ‘smart’ for data feedback, and ‘switched’ for command and control.

The term ‘intelligent PDU’ has become so ubiquitous, the definition is no longer clear. Not surprising, “What is an intelligent PDU?” is one of the most common questions we get from our readers. Terms like ‘network power strip’ and ‘IP power strip’ get bandied about, but they somehow fail to capture the essence of choosing and using an intelligent unit. We thought we would take a moment to clear the air about the term, and in doing so, we hope to set the record straight about this class of rack power strips. It is important to think of them as a category or family, if you will, rather than a specific kind of PDU.

If you’re Laurie Strode, Halloween isn’t exactly happy with Michael Myers creeping around – it’s more like a day of reckoning. What’s worse, poor Ms. Strode has had to wait around 40 years for a chance at revenge - and a decent sequel. At Server Technology, we are committed to not having you wait that long to get what you want. If you’re sensitive to jump scares or gore, no need to worry about this blog. Server Technology doesn’t have a frightening number of franchise reboots or disemboweled corpses to present today. We don’t have to retool our mission because we’ve always been focused on delivering power efficiently and precisely. Over the years, we’ve been getting smarter about our PDUs and power strips, as our industry recognition shows. Not to worry that you’ll have to bear with a lesser replacement, muttering all the while that it’s not as good as the original.

One of the identified macro trends for the data center market is the never-ending progression of new hardware technologies. Where “density” used to mean a 42U rack full of 1U servers, today’s hyperscale, hyper dense data centers may have tens, hundreds, or even thousands of nodes and cores within a single rack (or even single RU in some instances). In addition, SSDs, networking fabric, GPU processing cards, specialty FPGA and ASIC chips for AI applications are all being added at a rapid clip to the already complex stack found in most data centers.

In the early days of data centers, we had data. Then, we wanted to know more about how and when and where the data came into being. Thus, we developed metadata. Then we needed to report on both the data and the meta data. And then we wanted to analyze the reports – what are they telling us? Are they accurate? Are we optimized? Machine learning, deep learning, “big data” and “analytics” were developed as a means of understanding the underlying pools of data, resulting in still more data. Today, we are drowning in the ocean of data, metadata, reports, big data, analytics, and machine learning. So where do we turn? More technology needing more data – artificial intelligence.