Raritan's Power IQ 2.0 Energy Management Software Helps Data Center Managers Conserve Energy with New Thermal Analytics

SOMERSET, N.J., Sept. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Raritan today introduced a major release of its award-winning Power IQ® Energy Management software that helps data center and lab managers better understand environmental conditions at the rack in order to use power and cooling resources optimally without compromising performance.

Power IQ 2.0 provides Thermal Analytics for monitoring rack temperatures based on industry guidelines, including ASHRAE's (American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) guidelines* that recommend the upper temperature limit in a data center be increased by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit to 80.6 degrees.  Power IQ provides a comprehensive solution to: inform users if a data center or lab is within these recommendations and how much energy could be saved by increasing temperature to meet these new recommendations; alert users if temperature exceeds threshold conditions; and, provide long-term trend charts.  The solution also enables graceful shut down of underutilized Windows and Linux servers.  

Safely increasing a data center's ambient temperature can generate significant savings.  According to Gartner's David J. Cappuccio, managing vice president and chief of research for the Infrastructure teams, "Data center managers can save up to 3 percent in energy costs for every degree of upward change in the baseline temperature, known as a set point.  The higher set point means less frequent use of air conditioning, which saves the energy used to run cooling systems."

Power IQ 2.0's unique agent-less approach enables graceful shut downs and start ups of servers connected to any rack power distribution units (PDUs).  It does not require additional software to be loaded on the target server and leverages standard operation system scripts and commands.  Energy can be saved by scheduling automatic power cycling of an "IT device group" when not needed.  For example, a Lab manager could save about 25 percent on energy consumption by turning off systems at 7 pm on Friday and turning them on at 5 am on Monday.

Other vendor-agnostic v2.0 features include:

• Power and Environmental Health Monitoring -- Power IQ collects SNMP traps from all supported rack PDUs and environmental sensors, provides an event browser for sorting and filtering the event list and sends email notifications for specified events.  
• Vendor-Agnostic Naming -- Easily set or edit rack PDU outlet name, system name, contact name.
• Enhanced Search -- Enables the use of a partial IT Device Name or IP to find PDUs or IT devices.

"Data center and lab managers are having difficulty keeping up with the increasing demand for power.  Customers tell me they are running out of power and need a way to manage this resource more efficiently," says James Cerwinski, Senior Product Manager in Raritan's Power Business Unit.  "Power IQ provides them a comprehensive solution to obtain the most out of their existing power supply and infrastructure.   Power IQ provides the information and control to be more energy efficient and find stranded power capacity in areas, such as over cooling and running underutilized servers."

To download a free full-featured version of Power IQ, visit http://www.raritan.com/energy-savings.

About Power IQ®  

Power IQ collects a wide range of energy data -- amps, volts, PF, watts, kWh, temperature, humidity  -- gathered by Raritan's extensive family of intelligent rack power distribution units (PDUs) and third- party rack PDUs, including -- APC, Avocent, Cyber Switching, Geist, Knurr, Liebert, MRV, Rittal and Server Technology -- and in-line meters.

Enterprise-wide data collection at the device level enables Power IQ's analytics to calculate and chart active power, energy consumption, cost, and carbon footprint for servers and other IT devices.  Power information is presented in user-configurable graphs and reports that can be accessed from anywhere with Power IQ's Web-based dashboard.  Graphs can easily depict which devices are consuming the most energy, whether power conservation efforts are working, and if there are hot spots or over-cooled areas.   Power IQ is offered as a virtual and a hardware appliance.  

About Raritan (Raritan.com)

Raritan is a proven innovator of power management, infrastructure management, KVM and serial solutions for data centers of all sizes.  In more than 50,000 locations worldwide, Raritan's award-winning hardware and software solutions -- including intelligent PDUs, energy management software, KVM-over-IP and Serial-over-IP access products -- provide IT and facility directors, managers and administrators with the control they need to increase power management efficiency, improve data center productivity and enhance branch office operations.  Based in Somerset, N.J., Raritan has offices worldwide serving 76 countries.  For more information, visit Raritan.com.  Raritan is an active member of the Green Grid, Climate Savers Computing Initiative, and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design associations.  The company has been recognized by the EPA for its contribution to the agency's data center initiative.  Raritan's power management solutions have won five key industry awards this year.

*  Published in the 2009 "Best Practices for Datacom Facility Energy Efficiency".

ASHRAE® is a registered trademark of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc.  The psychrometric regions provided here are based on published ASHRAE information and do not imply sponsorship, endorsement or authorization by ASHRAE of this Cooling feature in particular, of Power IQ in general, or of Raritan Inc.  The Region specified by ASHRAE-2004 is based on published ASHRAE information from ASHRAE Publication, "Thermal guidelines for Data Centers and other Data Processing Environments", Atlanta, 2004. The Region specified by ASHRAE-2008 is based on published ASHRAE information from ASHRAE Publication, "Best Practices for Datacom Facility Energy Efficiency, Second Edition", Atlanta, 2009.

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SOURCE Raritan