Rack PDU Blog

Many businesses today are exploring edge computing, a process that involves decentralizing core network infrastructure and pushing it closer to end users in localized markets. With edge computing, the goal is to reduce long haul data transmissions, resulting in improved performance and lower operating costs. It can also provide access to localized analytics, which can help businesses understand and respond more effectively to users’ needs. There are, however, some critical logistical issues at play in edge environments that need to be considered in order to experience a successful deployment — one of the most important being changing environmental conditions in and around edge data centers.

Marc Marazzi, VP of International Sales, has put Server Technology on the map in the global market- growing the international team from three to ten members over the course of five years. Because of these efforts, we are able to better provide our customers with exceptional products and services, regardless of their location or application.

Take a hard look at your data center, and ask this tough question: If a hurricane were to hit right now, and you were to lose power, how would your facility fare? Does your data center have a reliable backup system that would immediately kick in? Houston's data centers came out unscathed after Harvey.

Save money by adopting smart rack PDU technology, such as the Alt-Phase HDOT PDU, along with Sentry Power Manager for your environmental monitoring solution.

Data centers are quickly disappearing, explains a new report from IDC. According to the report, data centers across the world are dropping in numbers and in square footage annually. In 2015, there were 8.55 million data centers in the world. By the end of 2017, this figure will drop to at least 8.4 million. And by 2021, there will only be about 7.2 million data centers — a total reduction of 15 percent from 2015.

Over the last several weeks, green energy has emerged as a major topic of discussion among businesses. Facebook, for instance, recently announced a new $1 billion data center in Fort Worth, Texas that runs entirely on renewable energy. “This is one of the most advanced and energy-efficient data centers on the planet, and it features our Open Compute Project hardware designs that result in world-class levels of energy efficiency,” stated Site Manager KC Timmons. “Also, it’s cooled using outdoor air and direct evaporative cooling systems that emphasize both water and energy efficiency.”

If you believe many of today’s publications, sensor-laden driverless cars look to become a part of everyday life over the next decade. The processing power needed to handle the flood of data for driving, along with vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to highway, and vehicle to dispatch/management communications is likely to be huge. Edge computing, putting compute infrastructure close to the point of use (beside or over the highway, for example) will likely be called for along with deploying 5G wireless communications for transporting the data.

Data centers are notoriously power hungry, with U.S. data centers responsible for over 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2013. That number is expected to climb to over 139 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020, requiring an incredible 54 power plants just to meet demand. The IT industry as a whole is now responsible for as much as 10 percent of the world’s total electricity usage!

Your business is currently in the process of decentralizing its core network and migrating to the “edge” of the network. The goal is to push your servers closer to key markets, in order to eliminate long-haul data transmissions. In doing so, you hope to reduce operating costs and minimize latency for your customers. Rest assured, your business isn’t the only one doing it. Edge computing has quickly emerged as one of the top data center trends, and we only see this pattern accelerating as the need for high-speed connectivity increases over the next 10 years.

Your centralized hyperscale data center is up and running in a stable fashion. Now the software team has come up with applications that are so bandwidth intensive that you are going to have to do some extensive pre-processing in every major locale to reduce network traffic and latency times. Sounds like some form of edge computing is needed, whether that is edge, mobile edge or even fog computing. And wherever distributed/edge computing is called for, intelligent remote power management is a requisite.