Emerson Network Power (NYSE: EMR) has introduced its LIFE Technology, an advanced diagnostics and IP-based communications system embedded within a company’s data center infrastructure equipment. The new technology can quickly identify problems, facilitate remote diagnostics and generate a speedy response for data center managers.
Generally speaking, the technology uses advanced service level data and IP-based communication to alert Emerson Network Power customer engineers of potential issues that may impact the life of systems within the data center infrastructure. In the event of a failure, the response would include the immediate dispatch of a service technician armed with detailed knowledge of the problem and the parts needed to fix it.
This is a critical difference that could save an organization hours of diagnostics and potential downtime, compared to traditional service organizations, contends Emerson. Compared to embedded monitoring, the legacy method relies upon a technician dispatched to the scene to diagnose the problem on-site -- and locating replacement parts that may not arrive until the next day, possibly resulting in service interruptions for mission critical facilities.
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Based on standard data center device data and commands, the LIFE technology utilizes standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for communication between infrastructure devices and system engineers. The use of HTTP as encapsulating protocol conforms to most common security policies at enterprise firewalls without requiring any direct manual intervention of network administrators. That makes the LIFE technology highly scalable and easily deployed in enterprise scenarios with standard security settings, says Emerson.
The system also reduces Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) by monitoring environmental conditions and usage history and using that data -- along with maintenance and service histories — to build data center and equipment profiles. Those profiles help system engineers identify conditions in which a unit may be at greater risk of failure so they may implement corrective actions before a failure occurs.
The recent announcement marks the availability of Emerson's LIFE Technology in North America; it is already available in UPS systems for EMEA and Asia. It will be introduced in stateside and Canadian Emerson cooling systems later this year and in Emerson Network Power infrastructure technologies within the next 12 months. Web card retrofit options are available for some current Emerson Network Power UPS and cooling systems.
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