Three data centers built up over five years, with two parked with different co-location service providers. More than 300 racks containing servers and other assets sourced from different vendors. Different access control protocols, multiple management dashboards, paper-based processes, less than tidy arrangement of assets within DCs.

As can be imagined, managing the three data halls and projects as well as supervising third-party staff working in the facilities was a challenge for the IT operations team of a global shipping company headquartered in Hong Kong. It did not help that systems and racks were cobbled together by different system integrators. Such integration was typically extensive and performed on a project basis. No readiness for future expansion was built in so any expansion meant further integration work.

About the only saving grace was the racks were evenly distributed across the three DCs so none required a disproportionately high amount of attention from the 20-person operations team. Still, the disparity in brand and configuration meant a lot of time and attention was spent on managing and supervising projects and maintenance work.

It did not help that the three facilities were a distance away from one another. Although this separateness made sense from a business recovery point of view, it meant members of the core team had to arrange access for third parties and be onsite while they performed work at the co-located DCs.

Wanted: standardization and modularity

Clearly the overall scheme of things needed to be improved so as to bring more order to the DCs and to the way they were operated and managed. The shipping giant decided one way to achieve these objectives was to introduce stardardization to its racks. Furthermore, as it had no wish to retire existing rack assets, modularity was a key requirement as it would allow it to expand its DCs in a seamless fashion and spend less on integration and maintenance.

Other items on its wish-list were: unmanned management of daily operations through an intelligent network, the ability to conduct remote health checks of each rack, improved rack power distribution, enhanced and auditable access control for DCs and racks, environmental monitoring of racks, and single-platform data logging.

To achieve these functionalities, the global shipper turned to Raritan solutions, including network-connected intelligent PDUs, Smart Rack Controllers, SmartLock door access and control system, and SmartSensors for temperature, humidity and rack doors. All are based on the Xerus platform, which combines hardware and software technologies to deliver intelligent and future-proof rack power architecture.

100 plus racks and counting

So far these solutions have been implemented at more than a hundred racks across the three facilities. There were no interruptions to day-to-day operations as work was carried out over weekends and outside business hours. To complement and make the fullest use of the intelligent PDUs, Smart Rack Controllers, SmartLock and SmartSensors, as well as to be able to closely monitor and optimize power infrastructure in its DCs, the company also implemented Raritan’s Power IQ DC energy management and power monitoring software.

With Power IQ, the company now has a real-time interactive facility health map that provides a color-coded bird’s eye view of key data including active power, current and capacity, temperature, humidity, and rack events on an individual asset or whole cabinet basis. With such data at hand, it can remotely manage power and energy for particular or all PDUs, locate stranded power, pinpoint the source for threshold alerts, raise DC temperature without risk, calculate PUE Levels, and more.

Unmanned data halls

And with rack doors now controlled and monitored remotely, the three DCs have transformed into unmanned data halls. Team members no longer need to be onsite or worry about unauthorized persons entering the facilities or physical keys being lost or replicated. Consequently, the team now has a slimmer duty roster and more time to focus on planning and other higher value-added duties. Additionally, paper-based reporting has been eliminated and reports are generated faster than before.

The benefits that the shipping company is deriving from the Raritan solutions will become even more pronounced as deployment progresses and the team is looking forward to further manpower cost savings, improved uptime, higher operational efficiency, more energy reduction, and having much fewer integrators to work with.