Rack PDU Blog

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.

Decisions, decisions. We often stress over relatively easy decisions more than we reasonably should. One decision that shouldn’t be all that difficult – once you’re armed with the proper knowledge – revolves around which type of rack mount PDU you’ll need to help power your data center for the foreseeable future. When picking a rack mount PDU for your data center, pinpointing your exact needs before shopping will save you a lot of time and energy in the long run. Perhaps density is your primary concern. Or maybe uptime is on the top of your checklist, along with capacity planning. That’s where Server Technology comes in. We offer smart, switched and other intelligent rack PDU options ranging from ready-made units with super-fast shipping to PDUs precisely customized to meet your every need.

Awhile back, you and your team implemented a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) strategy to help control your rapidly-growing department. At the time, your thinking was that DCIM would streamline operations, aid in knowledge-based decision making, and help your business respond to changing workloads. The whole point was to make life easier for you and your team members, while also making the data center more efficient and cost-effective for your business (which is now riding almost entirely its network infrastructure). Let’s face it, though: Things aren’t going exactly as they planned. Your data center is still wasting vast amounts of power on a daily basis, and it’s still suffering from sporadic bouts of downtime. And on top of it, you’re continuously operating in the red zone and upper management is not happy about it.

Utility power should just be there. Always on. Never failing. Today’s hyperscale data center designs frequently count on the electric utility to supply them with a stable source of clean renewable energy. Alternatively, some use locally generated power with the utility as a backup. Combining robust software stacks that incorporate ...

Since 2014, federal data centers have been optimizing their facilities under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), a money-saving initiative imposed by the federal government that will force certain data centers to close by 2018.

If you were in the position to start from scratch with power distribution, what would you do? For many of our education customers looking at planning a new facility, the answer is to completely rethink the norms. Many data center managers are making do with the power distribution that came with the building, and for most, the system is not current. No pun intended.

With people, there’s such a thing as book smart and practical smart. In the case of Server Technology’s Intelligent PDU line, you get the best of both worlds – a product that not only boasts powerful specs on paper, but also makes a real difference in your data center’s efficiency efforts. We recently sat down with Server Technology’s Director of OEM and Global Accounts, Marc Cram, to discuss the benefits of choosing Switched or Smart Rack PDUs in your data center and how they can lead to greater efficiency and cost savings in the long run.

We see this problem time and again with cloud computing: First, a business will partner with a hosted cloud provider offering affordable access to premium infrastructure; then, the business will migrate its workloads and wait for the cost savings to roll in. Oftentimes, though, the cost savings never materialize. In fact, it's very common for a business to spend more money on cloud services in the long run than it would on legacy network expenses.