Intelligent Data Centres Issue 25 | Page 72

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 .
UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
If you put technologies that are flexible like that into your data centre , when you do refresh , it enables you to grow and makes it easier when you ’ ve got these upgrades .
What is your best practice advice for data centre managers to ensure they ’ re creating a power strategy that will futureproof their infrastructure ?
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 centre , 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 .
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 centres 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 .
Also , a server sitting idly in your data centre 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 centre .
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 . ◊

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 .

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