Rack PDU Blog

It’s important to realize that data centers — which are notorious energy hogs — need to be front and center in a CSR strategy. It’s impossible to build an effective and honest CSR strategy without reigning in and controlling your data center’s power output. So, how do you control your data center’s power output? The easiest, and most effective way, is to invest in tools that provide real-time power monitoring and environmental reporting at the rack level.

As I was sitting around the other day and casting about a topic for this blog post, my colleagues jokingly suggested that we talk about this trend of putting an ‘i’ in front of everything. You know, how an intelligent PDU can be called iPDU or even IP-PDU, the now-normal branding standard of our modern age, the world of iEverything. The ‘i’ in the first iMac stood for the Internet, not necessarily intelligent. At the time, the idea of an internet-based personal computer was quite revolutionary. The ‘i’ moniker also brings to mind another intelligent ’i’ product, introduced by German sports car company BMW and infamously known as the Drive. While it originally stood for intelligent, the ‘i’ quickly became known to stand for ‘infuriating.’

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In a recent blog post from these pages, we discussed several situations in which you might consider using horizontal power distribution units in lieu of the more common vertical power distribution devices. Based on responses to our post, we decided to provide more feedback on going horizontal. We discussed several situations in our previous post that favor the use of the more compact horizontal PDU. Some of the reasons include distributing power from a rack-mounted UPS, or when you have space at the back of the rack left by shallow IT equipment such as those half-sized switches and routers. We also discussed situations in which additional air flow through the sides of the cabinet could be advantageous.

The voltage in a DC supply unit (such as a fuel cell), by comparison, cannot be changed unless the power supply is altered or turned off, such as with a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) system. DC is, therefore, less efficient and affordable to transmit than AC power, but it can be accomplished.

Data center environmental monitoring is nothing new. Systems such as the first Sensaphones have been around for decades, dialing out on POTS lines to report on space, power, and cooling. But don’t get me wrong – we’ve come a long way, baby. Haven’t we? As our friends at the Green Grid have correctly noted, you cannot improve what you are not measuring. It is safe to say that, up until now, we have never had access to the volume of information we can capture now, nor could we process it into useful and actionable data. But one thing has not changed, and that is the fact that we still rely on probes and sensors to capture all those little kernels of information.

As they say in Game of Thrones, winter is coming. And while you may not have to worry about ice zombies invading your data center, if you are located in the north may have some tough power-related challenges to face when the temperature plummets.

While use of vertical PDUs, or vertical rack power distribution units, has become nearly ubiquitous in today’s data center, they are not the only game in town. Since we have been getting a lot of questions lately about Horizontal rack PDUs, we thought it would be useful to take moment to pause and reflect on our counterpart from the other axis. Besides orientation, the most obvious difference between the two rack mount power strips is that of space – outlet space to be exact. Since the typical horizontal PDU fills 1 to 2U gaps, the number of outlets available is limited to the width of the rack or the number of U spaces you are willing to part with.

Ireland’s state-owned Electricity Supply Board (ESB) recently made headlines when the company publicly referred to its data centers as a liability for their heavy power consumption. As explained in Data Center Dynamics, the remarks appeared in an interim financial statement from 1H17. The issue was referred to as a principal risk to the company and was later clarified by a company spokesperson.

October is already here, which means we’re rapidly approaching the end of the year. Before you know it, the holiday rush will arrive, followed closely by the start of 2018 — which means time is running out to plan your data center’s 2018 power management strategy. Now is an important time to round up your team and discuss ways that you can reduce energy waste next year so that your data center can save money and become more efficient in the process.