Raritan recently announced new power management capabilities for its Intelligent Rack Transfer Switch, a product the company says “helps data centers keep equipment operating through power failures and provides insights on energy usage and rack-equipment health.”
The Intelligent Rack Transfer Switch uses a patent-pending hybrid design, Raritan explains, “for fast and durable load transfers from one power source to another.” With recently added capabilities, the switch “now offers outlet-level metering and power switching. Ideal for cloud computing infrastructure and data center racks filled with one-power-supply devices, the new switch is one of the fastest in the industry—twice as fast as standard automatic transfer switches—and one of the most reliable,” the company proclaims.
Similar to the company’s intelligent rack power distribution units, the new transfer switch can monitor data center power at the outlet level as well as the inlet level, Raritan says, “providing more granular energy information useful for capacity planning and managing energy costs. The transfer switch’s new secure switching capabilities enable power to a device to be turned on and off remotely, eliminating visits to the data center.”
David Wood, director of Raritan’s power business, comments, “Before Raritan released its first intelligent rack transfer switch model, the choices were limited.” He added that automatic transfer switches (ATS) were inexpensive but suffered from longer transfer times of 8 to 16 ms and frequently failed as a result of electrical arcing that welded contacts together. Plus, he said, static transfer switches offered very fast transfers of 4 to 6 ms, but were nearly six times the cost of an ATS, drew more energy, and produced excess heat that consumed cooling resources.
“Raritan overcame these limitations with a new hybrid system that uses the best of both electromechanical relay and silicon-controlled rectifier technologies to deliver fast performance and better energy efficiency and reliability,” Wood said. “By introducing outlet-level metering and switching capabilities to our transfer switch today we are providing tools to help customers better manage their infrastructure resources and create intelligent data centers.”
The Intelligent Rack Transfer Switch is available globally with a number of options and range of voltage and plug types. It comes with an intelligent, network-ready controller with display, and with two USB-A along with one USB-B ports to support WiFi networking, webcams and cascading to share IP drops. The switch’s sensor ports support optional Raritan plug-and-play sensors for monitoring environmental conditions in the racks.