This blog was originally posted by Julie Brown on Server Technology Inc's Data Center Power Blog.
Data center managers today face a lot of the same challenges – they are trying to be more efficient and save money, which includes running devices at higher temperatures, so the need to monitor these environments is a lot more critical than it has been in the past.
The Data Center Power channel recently caught up with Calvin Nicholson, senior director of software and firmware here at Server Technology, to discuss the latest are trying to be more efficient and save money, which includes running devices at higher temperature
s, so the need to monitor these environments is a lot more critical than it has been in the past.
developments in our Sentry Power Manager (SPM), a rack-level data center power management software system that gives users power and environmental data, predicts where they might have future issues, lets them manage all PDUs from one dashboard and alerts them to and diagnoses problems.
Nicholson has been busy traveling cross-country, including a 7 city road show with RF Code and Nlyte Software, and meeting with different data center managers to figure out what their top concerns are and how Server Technology can help them overcome these challenges.
At Server Tech, we pride ourselves on providing the most accurate and reliable products in the industry, and a big part of what makes its solutions so successful is it builds products based on customer feedback and the need to solve real world data center problems .
As Nicholson explains, when it comes to top concerns in the data center, it’s almost the same old story – managers are concerned with efficiency, capacity planning, lowering power costs and doing more with less – but organizations are getting more creative in what they’re doing with solutions. We've just released the next version of SPM, version 5.3, which features some interesting additions.
For one, SPM now supports RF Code’s environmental monitoring capabilities. Now, users can bring in RF Code and not only have power monitoring functionality in the data center, but they can integrate with RF Code’s environmental monitoring for sensor information like airflow, pressure and humidity. SPM’s new version offers a single pane of glass combining Server Technology and RF Code. We first integrated with RF Code with its RFID tag into our PDUs, and now we are essentially bringing an API out of RF Code’s Zone Manager and bringing it into SPM.
You always hear - You can’t manage what you’re not monitoring. In many cases, data center managers are going to want to compare power information with other data. SPM has a new feature where users can compare the info it’s gathering against other power monitoring devices in the data center. This is important to ensure accuracy and increase efficiency.
Organizations of all industries are trying to do more with less and SPM makes that easy. Customers can use a combination of our PDUs and SPM and then automate discovering PDUs, firmware upgrades and auto-configure all the settings they want, in one location, at one time. Configuring the PDUs using SPM by using the SNAP template allows customers to set up critical parameters to save time, energy and personnel.
