48 CASE STUDY
48 CASE STUDY
rack PDUs . With three-phase power distribution directly to the rack , the firm could effectively double rack density without doubling the cost . Three-phase PDUs are also more energy efficient as it eliminates energy losses with each voltage step down .
The real-time information gathered from Raritan PDUs is analysed by the Power IQ DCIM Monitoring Software . In addition to monitoring power capacity and energy consumption , Power IQ provides data centre health maps , power analytics , cooling charts , and alerts of potential trouble . distribution and capacity to support the different cabinet configurations that would be deployed at the colocation site .
Designed to streamline and speed infrastructure deployments , the firm created standard cabinet configurations for different applications . One cabinet configuration , for example , consists of a Cisco UCS chassis , primary flash storage and backup storage . Another cabinet configuration could have three to six UCS chassis with primary flash storage and backup storage . The firm also wanted a single-pane-of-glass visibility of its power chain and data centre environment for planning purposes and to proactively eliminate potential problems .
Intelligent power chain & metering The firm was looking for power distribution and monitoring solutions . Historically the firm had opted for basic power distribution units at the rack and a branch circuit monitoring solution to measure power up to the remote power panel . But the solution in place doesn ’ t provide details on energy usage and capacity — such as where you may be oversubscribed .
For the new colocation site , the firm wanted finer metering granularity of power downstream – at the cabinet and device level . The firm ’ s IT team conducted a bakeoff of different vendors ’ rack PDU products . Raritan ’ s PDU was selected for its ability to provide accurate outlet-level power information and for the smart temperature and humidity sensors that plug into the PDU .
The firm purchased Raritan ’ s 50 amp 3-phase intelligent
Benchmarking To safeguard IT equipment , the colocation data centre also was outfitted with sensors to manage airflow , temperature and humidity . Temperature sensors have been placed to measure the return air temperature coming into the tops of the cabinets . By monitoring temperature near CRAC units , the sensors showed that the firm didn ’ t have to run all the CRACs – saving cooling cost . The sensors also help to eliminate hotspots .
As more applications are deployed in the data centre , the IT team keeps an eye on infrastructure constraints – such as sufficient switch port capacity , network connections to support a new cell and backup connections . To conserve ports and IP addresses – and reduce costs , the IT team uses the cascading features of Raritan PDUs . Eight PDUs are cascaded using one single IP address .
KVM and Serial Access over IP A long-time Raritan KVM user , the firm started over a decade ago to use Raritan ’ s KVM switches for out-of-band access to servers . Over time analogue switches were migrated to Raritan ’ s digital KVM-over-IP switches at the headquarters data centre .
The new colocation data centre has added Raritan ’ s Dominion KX III KVM-over-IP switches and Dominion SX serial solutions to remotely access and manage IT equipment . In turn , all the IT equipment connected to Dominion KX and SX solutions at both data centres can be controlled through a single portal using Raritan ’ s CommandCenter Secure Gateway . It provides logical views of the entire enterprise , as well as BIOS-level access to all servers via a browser . Through a single sign-on to a single IP-address , the accounting firm has real-time views of all physical and virtual servers in the headquarters and colocation data centres . n
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