January 7, 2009 -- 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. According to the company, the software now tracks and keeps a repository of 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 and IT equipment health.
The Power IQ application now provides a consolidated view of power information gathered from IT devices plugged into the company's Dominion PX intelligent power distribution units (PDUs) and a range of other rack PDUs, including those from APC, ServerTech and Geist. The software 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 remotely with Power IQ's Web-based dashboard. Reports can be 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, or to the entire building. The application can also provide energy views by division or business unit, by application, by offices and via other entities.
"The cost and supply of energy are critical problems for corporate data centers and hosting companies," comments 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."
Power IQ's open database compliant (ODBC) system can be integrated with customers' existing data warehouse and enterprise reporting systems.
Reports that Power IQ generates include:
* Kilowatts per Hour Energy Usage Reports -- Energy consumption information based on user-defined criteria are shown on these reports. Graphs can easily depict what devices are consuming the most energy, whether power conservation efforts are working, and if there are problem hot spots or over-cooled areas.
* Energy Costs per Kilowatt Hour Reports -- These reports, which can be used to bill back energy costs to users and customers, provide details on the cost of power consumption by user-defined groups, such as a department or business unit, or types of equipment, or applications.
* Power Capacity Reports -- By reporting on actual power used by IT devices in a rack and comparing that to allocated rack capacity, IT organizations can use the information to optimize power resources across racks. Racks with available power capacity to add more IT equipment can be identified. Also, project delays and downtime due to lack of power supply or circuit overloads can be avoided.
* Compliance and Carbon Reports -- To comply with government "green" regulations or corporate green objectives, Power IQ can track improvements on energy savings and carbon dioxide (CO2) reducing initiates.
Another capability of the Power IQ software is PDU management, which 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; the hardware appliance is a turnkey solution on an enterprise-class server.
On the Web:
www.raritan.com/poweriq