Intelligent PDUs Create Balance & Security Across the Power Hungry Server Racks
Power demands at data centres continue to grow, with the number of global sites increasing steadily and medium sized sites requiring up to 8MW, guaranteed supply from the grid and significant investment in redundant primary switchgear, together with the assortment of power generators and UPS to ensure the IT environment provides continuous up time. Those are the big numbers, but what about at the cabinet level power distribution? Innovations in power distribution units (PDUs), what some are calling intelligent PDUs, are creating live systems that are generating actionable data.
Take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves, is a highly relatable idiom for anyone designing power distribution infrastructure for a data centre. One of the largest Operational Expenses (OpEx) for a data centre is energy, it is estimated that on average 27% of ongoing costs is on power, and operators and customers want as much of that energy as possible to be used by productive IT systems. How do we do this when IT load has become less predictable, with massive change in usage driven by the growth of mobile data, IoT and media?
Factors that are driving interest in intelligent or smart PDUs include the increasing demand for high-power capacities in high-density compute environments, and rising demand for intelligent infrastructure products in data centres. This increase in server density in the racks is key to the intelligent PDU market which was valued at $1.20 Billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $2.01 Billion by 2023, illustrating the industry’s drive to acquire systems that can positively integrate into managed IT environments. In around the same period, the high density rack server market will grow from $36.5 Billion in 2016 to $90.56 Billion.
Author: Sander Kaempfer, BDM, Panduit EMEA.