t cht lk 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 center .
That bandwidth and amount of data can ’ t be distributed huge distances . For Edge and AI it can be a regular data center or a smaller data center , 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 really just starting to see the uses .
How does flexibility extend the life of a data center 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 highpower 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 .
If you put technologies that are flexible like that into your data center , when you do refreshes it enables you to grow and makes it easier when you ’ ve got these upgrades .
What is your best practice advice for data center managers to ensure they ’ re creating a power strategy that will future-proof their infrastructure ?
If you look at the devices themselves , believe it or not , they run more efficiently at higher voltages . So instead of running a server at 120 or 208 , if you run it as 230 or 240 volts ’, then you have an efficiency there .
When you stack up all those efficiencies it really adds up – especially when you ’ re using 1000s of kW like data centers do . Then , as I mentioned on the PDU side , I would look at technologies like integral locking . We mentioned the HDOT and HDOT Cx for the flexibility of outlets and the devices that you can plug in .
And then also , think about what you ’ re trying to do . Do you want to remotely turn things on and off ? If you ’ re thinking about understanding the power usage , look at a product that can measure power , whether it ’ s at the end feed which is pretty much typical for an overall capacity , but also at the outlet level .
Calvin Nicholson , Senior Director of Product Management at Legrand DPC ( Data , Power and Control Division )
First off , look at what the current and future density is for the cabinet , kW wise . Many of our customers are going with 400-volt solutions in North America , which is what the rest of the world is already doing . When you bring 480 power into the data center you don ’ t convert it all the way down to 120 , essentially , for a 208 application . So , there ’ s efficiency gains of bringing the power in at 480 , and just converting it down to 400 or 415 .
Also , a server sitting idly in your data center not doing any useful work still uses roughly about half the power that it would be if it was doing something . You don ’ t want a bunch of servers just sitting around in your data center .
There are decisions you can make that will help drive efficiency , both on the power chain but also in the application of the devices themselves . p
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