Flying Solo or Going Colo Means an Intelligent PDU

For the past two blogs, we’ve been discussing Marc Cram’s whitepaper, Flying Solo or Going Colo?  In it, he describes the circumstances that surround a choice to house racks and equipment in your own data center or in a colocation facility.  He presents a series of questions to consider in order to make the choice clearer and simpler.  When IT is your business, it often makes more sense to fly solo with your own data center built to suit your scale, load, and growth needs.  When the time to market and operational concerns are the focus of capital and energy, companies often choose colocation for their compute needs.  

In either case, Cram points out, power, people, and security play central roles in the final decision.  Equipment, too, plays a part, and it’s the one that makes all of these roles work together for the integrity of your computing.  Intelligent racks equipped with intelligent PDUs, such as those manufactured by Server Tech, can be effective gatekeepers whether your data is solo or colo.  They provide power management, access control, and data center environmental monitoring in one device. 

Like the decision to fly solo or go colo, there are several things to consider when choosing a data center PDU.  Power is the biggest of the recurring costs, and the right PDU on the rack can reduce the number of power drops needed and increase efficiency.  Environmental monitoring is another key consideration.  A PDU with temperature and humidity sensing and reporting capability facilitates uptime with insight into the airflow and possible overloads.  A PDU can even manage rack access door control if ever you need remote hands operation.   You can provide access to only the equipment that requires maintenance, and that activity will be logged.

To sift through the available options for an intelligent PDU for your intelligent rack, Cram offers to help you evaluate your needs.   He mentions several available capabilities to include in a possible data center PDU configuration.

• Verification of power consumption and reporting
• Control and monitor rack access
• Environmental monitoring of temperature, humidity, air pressure, and presence of water
• Remote power management and device reboot

Another way to make the racks even more intelligent is to consider an asset management system that incorporates data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software.  This is essential to capacity planning and keeping track of devices.  Knowing what is where in order to add, move or remove equipment is made simple with DCIM over time. 

Last but certainly not least, a good data center plan, whether it’s in your own building or in a colocation facility, includes redundancy.   More ways to get to the hardware interface mean more security and uptime.  Raritan’s keyboard-video-mouse switch and serial console offerings are industry-leading options to consider.  They also play well with Server Tech intelligent PDUs.  Together, Legrand’s brands make equipping the data center with intelligent racks an even more intelligent choice.  For more on the technology that brings intelligence to the rack and makes flying solo and going colo possible, visit the Server Technology website.