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New Server Technology White Paper - Power Efficiency Gains by Deploying 415 VAC Power Distribution in North American Data Centers

New White Paper - Efficiency Gains by deploying 415 VAC Power Distribution

Download Now - Power Efficiency Gains by Deploying 415 VAC Power Distribution in North American Data Centers - April 13, 2009

As Power densities within the Data Center cabinet continue to rise the industry is experiencinc a rising demand for 415 V products in North America.  While 415 V was traditionally once only considered an international solution higher power demands and density are requiring companies to examine new alternatives for delivering the necessary power to their cabinets.

Server Technology Whitepapers - Measuring Power and Efficiency

Our new Whitepaper coincides with the recent release of the Sentry Power Manager and upcoming POPS release.

With the rising costs of power and consumption the industry is desperate to address how to decrease costs and consumption.  The first step in providing power management and addressing consumption is understanding how much power is being consumed.

The Sentry Power Manager is capable of providing the Data Center Manager and Data Center department with the following capabilities:

• A central interface to access multiple network monitored sentry power distribution units.
• Global view of all Sentry devices and ability to view devices based on temperature, humidity, current and device status.
• Control all networked Sentry cabinet power distribution units.
• Control Sentry POPS (Per Outlet Power Sensing) Cabinet PDU on a per outlet basis.
• Power information including kW and kW-hour information for billing, power monitoring, trending and power reports.
• IT equipment power information can be used to measure the efficiency in your data center for PUE and DCIE, power efficiency ratings from the Green Grid.
• ODBC compliant database permits power and additional information to be exported to a Building Management System (BMS).
• Managing and monitoring alarm conditions.
• Power consumption for capacity planning.
• Maximize each power circuit by realizing current power being drawn.

To make better decisions, reduce power consumption and maximize each cabinet installation, more information is needed, per device, per application per cabinet, per groups of cabinets and per facility. The ability to monitor the current draw or power of an individual outlet within a Cabinet Power Distribution Unit as well as the voltage in-feed opens the door for significant opportunities to monitor and maximize efficiency, plan for future installations and determine the best location to allocate additional cooling resources.

Download the New Whitepaper Now.

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Who Needs -48VDC Remote Power Management?
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Imagine this…

It’s 3:13 in the morning and you’re awakened from a pleasant slumber by the beeping, whirring sound of your cell phone. It’s the data center. Notifying you that you’ve lost grid power and your UPS has gone on battery back-up.

While you stand there in your terry robe and fuzzy bunny slippers contemplating crawling back into your nice warm bed, time is ticking away for critical devices before they lose power completely.

As you throw on a wrinkled pair of jeans and yesterday’s t-shirt you’re calculating the time in your head. You know your UPS will last for 37 minutes on the current draw from your devices. You know it’s at least a 10 minute drive to the data center, 17 minutes total by the time you step foot inside.

You know this, because you’ve done all this before.

That gives you right around 20 minutes to safely shed all of your non-critical devices to expand the run-time of your UPS.

With very little traffic on the road at this hour your mind begins to wander. You wonder why the power dropped off this time. You picture a squirrel playing a tragic game of hop-scotch in a transformer field as you’re tires screech to a halt in the parking lot.

You check your watch as you flip on the lights in the data center. Twenty minutes remaining. You grab your keys and head for the cabinets…

WAIT!

What if this entire scenario never had to happen? What if you could expand the run time of your UPS by shedding non-critical devices while you sleep? Sound like a sweet dream?

With our cabinet power distribution units and smart load shedding feature, your CDU can communicate with your UPS. It will know when the UPS switches to battery, and with a little bit of configuration it can shed non-critical devices. You can also couple that with our remote shutdown agent, which will initiate a shutdown command to your servers before removing power.

All of which could save you hours of sleep and keep your systems running, while the public works electrician cleans up fried squirrel at 3:30 in the morning.

To find out more information, read our white paper “Smart Load Shedding Ensures Uptime”.

Smart Load Shedding ensures Uptime

Uptime or zero down time is the key driving factor in today’s data center design and operation with companies measuring downtime in thousands of dollars per minute when a system is not available. Many companies operating Tier III and Tier IV data centers also manage remote sites and co-location facilities that are just as critical as their main location. Managing both remote and co-location facilities requires new innovative solutions to ensure uptime. One such solution is using intelligent Cabinet Power Distribution Units (CDU’s) capable of providing Smart Load Shedding capabilities. Smart load shedding allows the operator to load shed based on three key operating parameters; 1) whether the UPS is on battery, 2) the temperature level or 3) the current load. These key parameters allow the user to automatically shed designated, non-critical, devices based on one or all of these conditions ensuring uptime and avoiding damage to the critical devices within the cabinet should a problem occur.

Event based load shedding i.e. UPS status, current level and temperature, is enhanced by the use of a remote shutdown agent. This agent resides on the server and provides a graceful shutdown by letting the server know that it is going to be shutdown and giving the server enough time to run any scripts or perform other operations that are required before the shutdown occurs. This remote shutdown agent is independent of load shedding and a CDU that is capable of working with a remote shutdown agent can provide a graceful shutdown of servers during a standard remote re-boot, if say a server is locks up, or if the other event based conditions occur. The remote shutdown agent provided by Server Technology Inc., has been honed over 15 years of experience with UPS management and server shutdown software. It is capable of operating with many operating systems including Windows, Linux (Red Hat), SLES, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Novell Netware and IBM AIX and is currently being used in tens of thousands of installations.

Even with the best data center design, infrastructure and support, situations will arise that threaten uptime. Implementing switched CDU’s with Smart Load Shedding technology ensures that problems like loss of power to the UPS, cooling problems or over current conditions won’t affect your ability to continue critical operations. Also, knowing that these controls are active 7 x 24 x 365, and will quickly respond to resolve any problems certainly provides piece of mind.

To read more, download the Server Technology Whitepaper on Smart Load Shedding or visit the Smart Load Shedding section of our website .

Cabinet Level Power Distribution Solutions for High Density Cabinets

Of all the issues facing today's data center manager, heat/power distribution top the list. Available uptime and growth constraints round out the top three.

And it doesn't appear this will change any time soon. With the high cost of data center floor space climbing more and more every day, data center managers are trying to squeeze every last square foot out of their cabinets. They're utilizing high density applications like cluster server configurations and blade servers, thereby increasing processor power per equipment footprint and increasing the amount of power required at the cabinet level.

It is now estimated that after just three years on the market, blade servers account for seven percent of all server shipments sold; with estimates showing that by 2008 they will make up thirty percent of all servers sold. It is expected that they will be the fastest growing server form factor through 2009.

So, how do you power a cabinet where the power requirements could exceed 40 kiloWatts?

There are many different circuit combinations that can be used to provide power to today’s densely populated cabinets. Many servers today are designed to take a large range of input voltage from 120V to 208V. Typically smaller servers that may or may not be rack mountable require 120 V. Most of today’s larger high density servers, such as blade servers require 208V power. While the floor space required to achieve a constant level of computing and storage capacity has shrunk, the energy efficiency of the equipment has not increased at the same rate. As a result, the power consumed and the heat dissipated has increased significantly within the cabinet foot print.

With increased power consumption comes important decisions that must be made with regards to cabinet level power requirements and selecting the proper CDU (Cabinet Distribution Unit). Tough choices like what power is brought down to the cabinet level such as 120V 15 or 20A, 208V 20 or 30A, 208V 30A 3-Phase or even 208V 60A 3-Phase are important decisions that effect costs, performance and the ability to provide for future expansion. The number of power drops that must be run to each cabinet greatly affects the cost and whether or not there is sufficient power available for current needs and expansion. This is especially true in critical applications where redundant power is necessary. Each power drop run to a cabinet costs $500 to $1,500 or more; as well as having other consequences such as the number of CDU’s required or whether or not cable management is a problem. This cost varies depending on several factors including panel space, distance, and what area the receptacles will be located in.

Only time will tell if future capacity demands will continue to increase power consumption and cooling levels to higher and higher levels. Current ASHRAE projections certainly predict that they will. Other technologies such as virtualization, dual core processors, and new more efficient processor designs along with current and future software solutions will ultimately determine the outcome.

Read more about High Density Solutions in Server Technology's Blade Server Power Solutions Whitepaper.