Rack PDU Blog

If you’re Laurie Strode, Halloween isn’t exactly happy with Michael Myers creeping around – it’s more like a day of reckoning. What’s worse, poor Ms. Strode has had to wait around 40 years for a chance at revenge - and a decent sequel. At Server Technology, we are committed to not having you wait that long to get what you want. If you’re sensitive to jump scares or gore, no need to worry about this blog. Server Technology doesn’t have a frightening number of franchise reboots or disemboweled corpses to present today. We don’t have to retool our mission because we’ve always been focused on delivering power efficiently and precisely. Over the years, we’ve been getting smarter about our PDUs and power strips, as our industry recognition shows. Not to worry that you’ll have to bear with a lesser replacement, muttering all the while that it’s not as good as the original.

One of the identified macro trends for the data center market is the never-ending progression of new hardware technologies. Where “density” used to mean a 42U rack full of 1U servers, today’s hyperscale, hyper dense data centers may have tens, hundreds, or even thousands of nodes and cores within a single rack (or even single RU in some instances). In addition, SSDs, networking fabric, GPU processing cards, specialty FPGA and ASIC chips for AI applications are all being added at a rapid clip to the already complex stack found in most data centers.

In the early days of data centers, we had data. Then, we wanted to know more about how and when and where the data came into being. Thus, we developed metadata. Then we needed to report on both the data and the meta data. And then we wanted to analyze the reports – what are they telling us? Are they accurate? Are we optimized? Machine learning, deep learning, “big data” and “analytics” were developed as a means of understanding the underlying pools of data, resulting in still more data. Today, we are drowning in the ocean of data, metadata, reports, big data, analytics, and machine learning. So where do we turn? More technology needing more data – artificial intelligence.

On October 14th-16th, 2018, Server Technology will be attending the Critical Facilities Summit in Nashville, TN. The summit focuses on educating, networking, and discovery for facility professionals. Server Technology’s Director of Engineering, Travis Irons, will be speaking about the new HDOT Cx technology. The award-winning innovative features from HDOT have evolved into the advanced HDOT Cx - one standard PDU to power your entire data center.

How to keep up with the need to build out multiple data centers a day? Edge and cloud computing players such as Vapor IO are finding themselves with a daunting task – figuring out how to roll out 40,000 data centers at cell tower locations around North America. Partnering with fast, flexible suppliers offering short lead times and high production capacity is a key enabler for widespread micro/edge data centers as well as building hyperscale data centers.

This year Raritan and Server Technology will be exhibiting together at SpiceWorld 2018 in Austin, TX. Now that 2 of the leading brands in the datacenter space are under the brand of Legrand, customers have superior choices when it comes to power and control in the datacenter.

Leave it to Dilbert to remind us that the collective human effort known as corporate doesn’t always generate the best ideas when it comes to your data center. Not to worry: Server Technology’s data center power distribution units, from single phase to three-phase PDU(s), always have your best interests in mind. Take the newly launched HDOT Cx, for example. The new Cx outlet design provides 2 outlets in 1, which not only solves the ongoing issue of density but also provides future flexibility to swap out IT gear without swapping out your rack PDU(s).

It’s never a good feeling reading about a truly green data center, and then realizing just how far behind your own data center ecosystem is in its sustainability efforts. Take Google, for instance. On September 14, Google announced a new commitment to achieving “Zero Waste to Landfill” in its data centers. As Google Technical Program Manager Rachel Futrell explained on the Google Green Blog, Google is striving to divert waste away from its data centers in a sustainable way. Six of its 14 sites are now achieving 100 percent diversion rates. Globally, Google is now diverting at least 86 percent of waste away from landfills. And Google wants to improve these figures!

Kids these days. You’ve got to hand it to Gabby, that entrepreneurial citizen of Grand Avenue. She recognizes that as times change, it takes great ideas to meet the needs of your customers.

The following is an excerpt from an episode on the new YouTube channel titled ‘Unboxing the Data Center Smart PDU.’* Please be aware there are product spoilers in this post.