Why You Need Intelligent PDUs for Remote Cloud and Colocation Services

A while back, your business made a strategic decision to expand its data center beyond its physical borders. Now, a large number of your servers live in hosted, third-party cloud and colocation facilities around the U.S. and possibly the world.  

Why did you outsource a large portion of your infrastructure? You did so to save money, increase efficiencies and establish a local presence around your key markets to reduce latency and costs when transmitting data. It made much more sense at the time to partner with companies offering premium infrastructure in managed facilities than to expand your legacy network (and take on additional CAPEX and OPEX).  

There’s just one thing you failed to take into full account:  

Server management and optimization is your responsibility. Not your provider’s.  

Most colocation facilities, in other words, provide access to four walls, a roof, and a room full of bare metal infrastructure. They give you the basic tools you need to thrive in the cloud. But you still need to monitor and manage this infrastructure to be successful unless you are working with a managed services provider.  You can discover more about our solutions for colos here.

Many businesses rush into the cloud and then face heavy unexpected costs — particularly from their heavy power usage. Expenses can easily accrue when managing large numbers of servers in disparate locations. It’s also possible to run into performance issues.  

So, what you can you do to trim expenses and boost server performance?  

You can invest in intelligent power distribution units (PDU). 

Server Technology offers smart and switched PDUs that come with High Density Outlet Technology (up to 42 C13 outlets), which is the highest number of outlets per form factor on the market.  

Here are some reasons to use Server Technology’s intelligent PDUs to monitor and manage your infrastructure:  

• Keep costs low: Server Technology’s intelligent PDUs can provide you with real-time and historical power usage metrics for each rack. With this information at your disposal, you can get a full sense of how your servers are using electricity, and how you can safely migrate workloads to reduce costs. You may find, for instance, that you have a group of zombie servers in one facility that can be shut down until they are needed.  
• Maintain uptime: When using intelligent PDUs, you can receive important alerts, and monitor trends that could lead to unplanned instances of downtime. Using a switched PDU, you can actually shut down power ahead of time if you need to.  Learn more about our uptime solutions.
• Reduce travel: You shouldn’t have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to make critical adjustments to your servers. Using Server Technology’s PDUs, you can make changes remotely — thereby saving time and money on maintenance.