News

Raritan Adds New Data Center Energy Management Capabilities To Power IQ Software

January 05, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

To provide a more complete and accurate view of energy usage within the data center and branch offices, Raritan has introduced new reporting and analytics capabilities to its Power IQ™ Energy Management Software. Power IQ tracks and keeps a repository on all types of granular power information from multiple platforms to help IT and Operations managers analyze power-related issues – ranging from IT energy costs to rack capacity to IT equipment health.

Power IQ provides a consolidated view of power information gathered from IT devices plugged into Dominion® PX intelligent power distribution units (PDUs) and a wide range of other rack PDUs, including APC, ServerTech and Geist. It also tracks rack temperature and humidity information collected by the Dominion PX’s environmental sensors.

Information is presented in user-configurable graphs and reports that can be accessed from anywhere with Power IQ’s Web-based dashboard. Reports can be easily tailored to look at power over any user-defined time periods and at any point(s) in the path from where power enters the building – from the PDU, to the outlet, to the circuit breaker, branch circuit, the data center, to the entire building. It also can provide energy views by division or business unit, by application, by offices and other entities.

"The cost and supply of energy are critical problems for corporate data centers and hosting companies," said James Cerwinski, Senior Product Manager at Raritan. "Detailed power information turned into useful insight is how Power IQ can help customers solve today’s energy-related data center issues. Our goal is to help customers reduce energy costs and their carbon footprint, find stranded capacity and improve data center operations."

PowerIQ’s open database compliant (ODBC) system can be integrated with customer’s existing data warehouse and enterprise reporting systems.

Another unique capability of Power IQ is PDU management. It simplifies managing distributed Dominion PX PDUs by enabling bulk firmware updates, configuration management and health monitoring to be accomplished remotely through a single Web interface. Security is ensured through standards-based authentication, Web session timeout and IP-based access control.

Power IQ 1.3 is available in two models – a virtual appliance and a hardware appliance. The virtual appliance is tested to run on a customer’s VMware® platform – saving rack space, energy and hardware costs. The hardware appliance is a turnkey solution on an enterprise-class server.