UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
Calvin Nicholson , Senior Director of Product Management at Legrand DPC ( Data , Power and Control Division )
a problem with your cooling system , it ’ s critical that you know right away .
With
switched intelligent PDUs , like the ones we provide , we have sensors for temperature , humidity , differential air pressure , water and contact closure . And various other things .
It allows confidence to know when there is a problem and that you can react before you have downtime or before you have a critical issue , ensuring that it doesn ’ t daisy chain within the data centre .
We have everything from devices that are measured at the in-feed for capacity planning to devices that measure at the outlet which is at the device and server level . We can really provide the information detailing what ’ s going on within the cabinet to ensure uptime and address problems quickly .
Can you introduce us to the PRO3X PDU and the challenges it aims to address ?
The
PRO3X PDU is really a hybrid design , taking some of the best Server Technology features and some of the best Raritan features .
One of the things we ’ ve done is integrate mechanical locking for every outlet , which means no more sourcing locking cables in different lengths and different colours – it ’ s inherently built right into the PDU itself .
That really helps as we know that the more people that are in the data centre , frankly , the more problems you ’ re going to have . With locking outlets , cables can ’ t be bumped or pulled by accident , as an example .
We ’ ve incorporated our HDOT and our
HDOT Cx technology , which is a custom outlet that we ’ ve patented and allows for a lot of flexibility as the hybrid Cx outlet can act as a C13 , or a C19 outlet . This helps to future-proof your cabinet configuration and make it much easier when there are equipment upgrades or cabinet refresh .
Could you share some use cases of how this technology is being used ?
Looking at a cloud application , for example , behind that environment , there is a PDU . Power and environmental monitoring is going on behind the scenes in a cloud environment .
When you get into a data centre application , whether it ’ s a typical data centre that you own or a colocation , the same technologies are being used , but in a different way . In a colocation facility , we find a lot of focus on monitoring , making sure the colo meets its SLAs .
In many regular data centres , power monitoring is key , right down to the device level .
It really comes down to what the customer wants to focus on – what ’ s important to them , what their SLAs are and what they ’ re trying to accomplish . We really do everything from very basic PDUs , all the way up to the most intelligent monitoring .
How does this technology ultimately enable the likes of Smart Cities and emerging technologies such as Edge Computing ?
If you look at Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence , you ’ re really bringing the compute closer to where it ’ s needed .
An example here would be a self-driving truck with a tonne of data . You need to track all that data and keep it somewhere
– whether it ’ s for storage , monitoring , or to understand how the truck can be more fuel efficient . That ’ s all done at an Edge data centre .
That bandwidth and amount of data can ’ t be distributed huge distances . For Edge and AI , it can be a regular data centre or a smaller data centre , but it ’ s really closer to where it ’ s needed .
You can also argue that it ties somewhat into Internet of Things , where you ’ ve got a large number of devices which the compute needs to be closer to . I think it ’ s really an enabling technology and we ’ re just starting to see the uses .
How does flexibility extend the life of a data centre and how does the PRO3X enable this ?
Being part of the critical physical infrastructure , the PDU is going to stay and last roughly the life of the cabinet .
We know that many customers refresh IT roughly every three to five years , depending on what they ’ re doing .
Let ’ s say we ’ ve got a product where half of the outlets are regular HDOT C13s and half of the outlets are HDOT Cx , that could be a C13 , or a C19 . So that one PDU can act as all 36 C13s . Or it can act as at least half of the outlets being a C19 .
When you ’ re an industrial installation , you may need just a few C19s , because you don ’ t have a lot of high-power density , but if you do a refresh you might need a little more kW . You ’ ve got the C19s that are available to support that .
WE REALLY DO EVERYTHING FROM VERY BASIC PDUS , ALL THE WAY UP TO THE MOST INTELLIGENT MONITORING . www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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