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Real-Time Power Monitoring for Data Center Optimization
By Rachel Ramsey TMCnet Web Editor
Increasing powering and cooling demands within the data center have made these the topics of choice for data center and facility managers for several years now. Increased power demands are a result of the need for more compute power and the higher density devices that resulted. Improved uptime, greater efficiency and lower costs are the triple crown of data center optimization. How do you get into the winner's circle? Part of the answer lies in implementing advanced data center power monitoring--that magic combination of the right power distribution units (PDUs), the best real time wire-free power monitoring solution and the most advanced power management software.
Server Technology (News - Alert), a provider of rackmount power distribution and monitoring solutions that help manage power capacity, reduce downtime and improve energy efficiency, and RF Code, a provider of active IT asset management and environmental monitoring solutions, have jointly developed a rack level wire-free power monitoring solution. Integration between Server Technology’s products and RF Code’s wire-free solutions are one solution to advanced data center power monitoring.
RF Code provides an RFID tag (News - Alert) that plugs into Server Technology’s cabinet PDUs and sends out power information to the RF Code system. The combination of Server Technology PDUs with RF Code's sensor tags can give you the data you need to make smart power-related decisions for your data center.
“You can’t manage or control what you’re not monitoring,” said Calvin Nicholson, senior director of Firmware & Software, Server Technology.
Increased demands for power and cooling combined with decreased power availability and increased power costs have convinced the data center industry that it makes good business sense to go “green.”
“As our combined solution matures we’re seeing higher and higher adoption rates. If you look at things like The Green Grid (News - Alert) and their different levels of measurement, they’re recommending continuous measurement at the rack level which is where we’re located,” said Nicholson. “People were monitoring back at the remote power panel but if they really want the granularity of what’s going on with their devices and their applications and within the cabinet itself then they’re using our products. We’re seeing higher adoption rates and we’re seeing trends beyond just basic or metered products to more intelligent and managed devices. Within those intelligent and managed devices, people are looking to power monitoring to help with energy efficiency, controlling power costs and for trending and analysis over time.”
Wire-free monitoring greatly reduces the number of IP addresses and lowers installation costs while still providing reliable power monitoring information.
“What it really allows you to do with RF Code is typically all of our PDUs would go on an IP address, but with the RF Code solution you can just take our PDU and you can plug in an RF ID tag and get the power information out of their tag,” explained Nicholson. “So you’re saving IP addresses but the overall power story is the same…they can help you increase efficiency, they can identify zombie servers, they can look at where power is being wasted, they can three-phase load balance, they can do everything you would find with our regular power solution.”
“If you look on the power side, roughly half of all the power used in the data center is on the IT load which is within the cabinet, which is exactly where our PDUs are,” said Nicholson. “If you want to understand where you’re using power, if you want to understand how much power you’re using, if you want to look at increasing your efficiency, look for devices that aren’t producing real work, if you want to look at three-phase load balancing again…all of those things are routed through our PDU and provide power information out to the customer that they can use to make decisions, solve problems, look at trends of power to learn when they will run out of power, what cabinets they should install their devices in, all that stuff is related around what we do with power monitoring in the data center cabinet.”
Nicholson will be one of the presenters for an upcoming webinar, “Real Time Wire-Free Data Center Power Management,” hosted by Server Technology and RF Code. Register now for the webinar and discover how the integration of RF Code’s real-time power monitoring solution with Server Technology’s line of PDUs and Sentry Power Manager (SPM) enables you to run a more efficient facility based on real-time data, enhance your SPM investment with the addition of real-time power monitoring data and make better capacity planning decisions based on true energy usage.
Edited by Rich Steeves
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