As a recent global cybersecurity incident demonstrated, businesses and organizations across the world rely heavily on digital systems and services, and this will only increase as the future of work becomes more digital.

This means that data centers will play a greater role than ever in keeping these services up and running. Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and other technology trends will increase data demands, resulting in higher power consumption and more heat control needs. For data center operators, these operating factors can be significant cost drivers.

They cannot be avoided, but teams can use the data to optimize operations and ensure more efficient spending. Let’s learn how DCs can maximize power consumption and temperature control by using intelligent hardware, such as PDUs with sensors and Branch Circuit Monitors (BCMs).

Monitoring Power Quality and Consumption
Is it time for a retrofit? Consider including an intelligent rack PDU (iPDU) model like Raritan’s PX series that monitors power quality, branch circuits, input metering, and for some models, outlet metering and control.

With the PX4, for instance, you can get real-time insight into critical power quality, energy efficiency, and equipment health at the cabinet with a ±0.5% metering accuracy. Additionally, it measures total harmonic distortion, reactive power, phase angle, displacement power factor, apparent energy, and inrush current.

By installing iPDUs with such capabilities, teams can better understand the daily operations of their racks on a granular level, including fluctuations, power consumption, and available capacity. Furthermore, Raritan iPDUs feature a built-in, proprietary Xerus technology platform, which provides seamless integration with most DCIM systems for comprehensive reporting.

Having such knowledge allows operations teams to identify available space for new equipment, consolidate existing assets, identify aging assets, and anticipate potential issues, all beneficial in improving uptime and managing a facility's power chains.

Keeping an Eye on Temperature
As DC power and processing loads increase, so does the amount of heat generated. In conjunction with prevailing sustainability standards, DC operators face an increasing challenge to maintain optimal facility temperatures.

By installing sensors like Raritan’s SmartSensors for temperature, airflow, air pressure, and other relevant environment data, operators can monitor potential hot spots, cold spots, and other hazards that can affect facility uptime, even in remote facilities, in real time and receive accurate, real-time alerts.

Using Xerus technology, Raritan SmartSensors can be seamlessly integrated with any Raritan or Server Technology PDU or Raritan Inline Meter.

Such data, collected over time, will be essential to teams in identifying times of the day when more intensive cooling may be required, allowing them to use existing systems more efficiently or to make data-driven decisions regarding the addition of new systems.

Branch Circuit Monitors – An Alternative for Power Tracking

Not ready to invest in an iPDU yet? You might want to consider adding Branch Circuit Monitoring (BCM) systems - devices that can be retrofitted into existing floor PDU and remote power panel (RPP) setups without disruption or downtime.

An average BCM system monitors the current for the main three-phase circuit, neutrals, and up to 96 branch circuits. In more advanced BCM systems, voltage, kVA, and kWh readings can also be collected for each circuit, which is particularly useful for placement facilities that charge clients for power consumption.

To facilitate monitoring and analysis of power quality and demand trends over time, all readings collected by a BCM can be communicated to the central management system or DCIM.

Conclusion

DCs must prepare for future challenges, and to do it right, teams must collect data if they haven't already.

Small-scale retrofits of hardware with intelligent capabilities, upgrades of DC setups with enhanced real-time data capabilities, or adding monitors and sensors to existing hardware can be used to measure the quality of power and temperature within a facility.

The data will be invaluable for optimizing current operations as well as constructing projections for expansions and retrofits in the future, helping teams achieve both short-term and long-term cost savings and more efficient usage of their facility’s infrastructure.