Rack PDU Blog

A growing number of companies are now moving their servers to the “edge” of the network for lower latency data transmissions, and reduced network operating costs. This is one of the major trends occurring in the IT space right now, and industry experts predict it will continue to accelerate in the coming years.

There’s an old proverb that goes, “Trust, but verify.” This sentiment is particularly apt for data center management, where it’s vital to track every metric you can get your hands on. The need for better environmental monitoring capabilities is increasing due to increasing compute, network, and storage densities and increasing operating temperatures in the data center. Thus, keeping close watch over environmental activity in your data center, particularly when it comes to temperature, and humidity in the rack are critical to prevent disasters if left unchecked. So, what is the best way to get four or more data center environmental monitoring points in your cabinets? Sounds like a complicated question, but the answer is simple: Server Technology Intelligent PDUs are enabled right out of the box with the abilities to attach environmental probes that can precisely detail environmental conditions in your data center equipment cabinets. This information is most reliable when measured external to the devices in the cabinet.

Before signing on the dotted line, ask your colocation provider these questions about your data center power needs.

You and your team members have been thinking about switching your cabinets to 415/240 VAC. This will reduce the total number of transformers in your power path, which should in effect reduce power loss — and operating costs — in your facility.

In many cases, service with a colocation provider begins the minute you sign their contract. This means time is of the essence when it comes to getting up and running quickly. Server Technology offers more than 12,000 PDU variants to handle every request you can imagine (and then some). Of these, we have a select line of rack PDUs known as Fast Movers, which ship within 3-5 business days so you can have your cabinet operational ASAP.

A long time ago in a data center far, far away, users had only a handful of choices: build your own enterprise data center or house a server rack in your company’s storage closet. The hybrid options were few and far between.

As a data center administrator, one of the most important parts of your job — besides maintaining uptime and staying under budget — involves monitoring and managing your department’s resources. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your data center is fully capable of meeting the current and future needs of your enterprise and its changing customer base. Of course, capacity planning is a broad topic that extends throughout all areas of the data center. It’s important to stay on top of resources like cooling, available rack and floor space, lighting and more. But all of these resources have one underlying commonality: They need electricity to function. So data center power usage should be a top resource to monitor.

PUE is nothing more than a ratio that compares a data center’s total energy consumption to the energy that is consumed by its IT equipment. In other words, it’s a way of seeing how much power your servers are using, versus your lights. The ideal PUE for a data center is 1.0, while a reading closer to 2.0 indicates that for every kilowatt of electricity consumed by the equipment, another kilowatt is needed to power the facility.

Let’s face it, power is often one of the last boxes you tick on your data center to-do list. Nobody intends to save one of the most mission critical elements for last, but time and again, it’s one of the final pieces of the puzzle data center managers deal with.

While the private sector is experiencing unprecedented data center growth, the exact opposite is happening in the public sector. Even though the federal government is using just as much data and technology as any other entity, the marching order for federal data center operators is reduce, reduce, reduce.