Rack PDU Blog

I know we all know this already, and I’m preaching to the choir here, but the pressures on today’s data center managers are enormous and there are no breaks in sight. What’s all the pressure about? Uptime!! That’s the bottom line. Dependability of the infrastructure is on top of everyone’s list. Downtime is just not an option. This is especially true with large enterprises such as banking and trading where the cost of downtime has been calculated to be $6 million a second due to unbalanced trades.

If you’re in the market for data center power monitoring software, you’re already taking a big step towards creating a more resilient, and efficient, network. It’s important to remember before making a purchase, however, that not all data center power management solutions are capable of providing the same level of support.

Recently, you’ve been longing for those halcyon days of the early 1990’s, when data centers were first emerging, and personal computers were the only devices you had to worry about connecting to your servers. Closing your eyes, you can still hear Pearl Jam wafting out of your battery-powered transistor radio... Enough, already. The truth is that what seems like a simpler time was anything but; it’s easy to forget, in other words, from a power management perspective, just how difficult these early days of computer networking actually were. Issues like overloading circuits and overheating servers regularly led to inefficiencies, long periods of downtime, fires and high operating costs. For these reasons, being a data center manager at this time meant having to practically live at work as maintaining uptime was an around the clock responsibility.

Big Data will make our lives better!

Cloud Computing is here it stay!

Data Center consolidation saves huge amounts of money in the long term and is driving a lot of data center spending right now!

There is a lot of value in server virtualization and consolidation projects!

People in the Data Center Cause Problems and always have!

The topic of electricity prices are on just about everyone’s mind in southern California these days. That’s because the California Public Utilities Commission may soon ask local utility providers to adopt a new time-based payment system that will significantly drive up prices during peak times. Under this plan, which could go into effect in 2019, electricity rates could change depending on the time of day, and the time of year. Electricity will be more expensive when it is in peak demand, and less expensive when it is not.

Network capacity is currently running at a premium rate in Silicon Valley. As explained in a recent Data Center Knowledge article, data center rents are now running from anywhere between $125 to $165 per kilowatt per month. Prices could increase again by the end of 2015, too.