Raritan Adds New Features to Its Data Center Monitoring, Power Usage and Capacity Planning Software Solution
Raritan offers intelligent power and energy management solutions which allow Data Center operations managers, IT administrators and facilities managers to be more efficient with energy consumption, make more informed capacity planning decisions and improve operational efficiency. Now, Raritan’s Power IQ™ software tool offers CO2 consumption reports on top of a long list of other features and benefits, including energy reports, outlet-level monitoring and open data base compliance.
What is Power IQ?
Power IQ simplifies management of and data collection for multiple rack PDUs, to help IT and facilities managers improve data center availability, enhance capacity planning and improve energy efficiency. Power IQ provides energy and CO2 consumption reports for IT devices, racks, zones, customers and data centers. Plus power and environmental trend reporting enables managers to stay ahead of data center capacity needs.
Power IQ manages any number of Raritan’s Dominion® PX and third-party rack PDUs all through a single Web interface. The system is open data base compliant (ODBC) and can be integrated with your current data warehouse and enterprise reporting system.
How it works
Power IQ gathers and analyzes device-level power information, in real time, from servers plugged into intelligent power distribution units (PDUs). The information can help you make key data center health and optimization decisions. It can help identify underutilized servers as candidates to virtualize, problem hot spots or overcooled areas, circuit breakers at the point of tripping, and racks with available power capacity to add more IT equipment.
“Tracking and displaying power at the IT device level are laying the groundwork for making high-value improvements in capacity management and energy efficiency,” said James Cerwinski, senior product manager at Raritan’s Power Management Business Unit. “Using individual device statistics to manage data centers is similar to managing a baseball team. The team batting average may tell you that you need better hitting, but you make your changes at the player level. In a dynamic data center, you need stats to decide what device changes are required and, most importantly, what changes are producing the desired results in terms of energy efficiency and capacity planning. Power IQ takes guessing out of the equation.”
Through a single Web interface, Power IQ aggregates power-utilization data for use in power usage trend analysis and reporting. Today’s new class of network-connected PDUs provide granular “IT device-level” or outlet-level metering, and provide power intelligence on each piece of equipment – such as real-time current and voltage – and rack temperature and humidity. They also enable secure power on and off and power cycle capabilities with connected devices from remote locations.
How you can benefit
You can use Power IQ to generate reports on baseline energy usage, and track improvements on energy saving initiatives and circuit capacity utilization. Power IQ provides accurate IT device, outlet group-, rack-, branch circuit- and data center-level power, current, voltage, temperature and humidity monitoring, as well as remote outlet switching. The ODBC system can be integrated with data warehouse and enterprise reporting systems.
Power IQ also provides centralized management of distributed Raritan Dominion PX PDUs – enabling 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.
Three-Phase Models Now Added to Our Power Lineup
Raritan recently introduced three-phase models to its Dominion® PX line of intelligent power distribution units (PDUs) that provide granular power usage information - down to the individual outlet level - and support rack temperature and humidity sensors.
Detailed, real-time power information is helpful to IT and facility managers looking to improve data center uptime, enhance power and cooling capacity planning and improve energy efficiency. The new three-phase PDUs work in concert with Raritan's newly introduced Power IQ™, an element management and analytic solution that turns high volumes of power-utilization and environmental data collected by PDUs into valuable power usage insight.
Power IQ gathers and analyzes power information on individual servers, in real time - and supports the collection of data from Raritan's Dominion PX and third-party PDUs. For example, you can use Power IQ to generate reports on baseline energy usage, and track improvements on energy-saving initiatives and circuit capacity utilization. The open database connectivity (ODBC) compliant system can be integrated with data warehouse and enterprise reporting systems. Power IQ can also centrally manage PDUs, making it easier to deploy and manage PDUs in larger data centers.
Manage Your Blade, Rack-mounted Servers and Virtual Machines from a Single, Unified GUI.
Now you can access and control all of your blade servers, rack servers and virtual machines through the world's best KVM-over-IP and our CommandCenter® Secure Gateway management system.
Raritan server access solutions now support IBM® BladeCenter, HP BladeSystem and Dell PowerEdge, as well as blades from other vendors, to offer you secure, BIOS-level access at the rack, over IP and via modem.
Our new solution uses a common, browser-based interface for local and remote access, so you can log onto a single IP address using a standard web browser. What this means is that you can now access and power control all of your physical and virtual servers -- anywhere in the world - from wherever you happen to be.
It includes automatic configuration for easy deployment and can auto-discover installed blade servers and display dynamic status.
Security and IT compliance is enhanced too, by centrally authenticating users for local and remote access, providing access privileges on a per-blade basis, and centralizing audit logs to meet compliance requirements.
Smaller data centers benefit as well, because you can now deploy Dominion KX II standalone without an additional management system for blade server access.
Trade in your existing technology today. You'll manage smarter. And you'll save.
Now you can take advantage of an unprecedented offer from Raritan. Simply trade in your existing equipment and migrate to our next-generation KVM-over-IP and Serial-over-IP solutions. In return, we'll give you great savings, plus the latest in intelligent IT management technology.
Let CommandCenter Secure Gateway help you manage Your Virtual Machines and Physical Servers More Intelligently
Server virtualization is one of the most important trends taking place in the IT industry. By consolidating multiple virtual servers onto one physical server, companies can save on hardware costs, administration overhead, as well as reduce the requirements for space, power, and cooling. However, server virtualization also brings management challenges, including managing mixed virtualized and non-virtualized servers, increased vulnerability of the host servers, control of virtual server and virtual center sprawl.
Raritan's CommandCenter® SG resolves these management problems posed by virtualization. By consolidating access to both physical and virtual servers into a single interface, Raritan simplifies administrators' daily interaction with otherwise complex virtualization deployments. It provides both in-band (RDP, VNC) and out-of-band (iLO/DRAC/RSA, VMware Console Viewer, KVM) management capabilities. Remote power control (Virtual Power interface, Intelligent PDU), plus consolidated server access across multiple VirtualCenters and dynamic auto-discovery of virtual machines and VirtualCenters.
World's Best KVM-over-IP Switch is Getting Even Better
Dominion KX II won the "Best KVM" in InfoWorld's 2008 Technology of the Year Award. Since then, Raritan brought more innovation into this product and made the best even better:
- Dominion KX II now supports blade servers. Raritan now provides secure access to blade servers, rack servers as well as virtual machines from a unified interface. This new, unified tool will help IT administrators manage their data center more efficiently.
- Dominion KX II supports dual-stack IPv6 and IPv4 networking. The Dominion KX II provides "dual stack" IP networking with simultaneous support of IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 is the "next generation" IP protocol, which is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years.
- Support of an external modem allows you access to your servers during network disruption. The current firmware of Dominion KX II supports an external modem, which is to be connected to the modem port on the back panel of the Dominion KX II. Please note that the MPC Standalone Client must be used for modem connections.
- Virtual Media available in the BIOS
Virtual Media is one of the most powerful features of the Dominion KX II digital KVM switch. IT administrators can load software and transfer files to servers in the data center from drives and media on their local PCs. Recent changes to the Dominion KX II firmware have extended virtual media to the BIOS level. The new dual USB virtual media CIM (D2CIM-DVUSB) and USB profiles support a wide variety of servers and BIOS versions. Administrators can now boot and install operating systems remotely, increasing productivity and eliminating trips to the data center. A wide variety of media is supported, including CD/DVD, USB Drive, hard drive and ISO image. And virtual media is available on every Dominion KX II model. Purchase or trade up to the Dominion KX II and see your productivity soar!
Dominion SX Secure Console Server
The Dominion SX now offers console access via modem and port syslog capabilities.
- Console access through modem - also referred internally as Terminal access or Hyperterminal access, lets customers choose how they use the DSX modem. In Console mode, no modem IP is involved and the customer simply dials into the DSX modem and gets the CLI as if they are accessing the DSX local port.
- Port syslog - provides the ability to forward even port/console data to a syslog server. This is in addition to the existing feature of logging port data to NFS servers.
Raritan Expands LCD KVM Console Product Line to include a 19" LCD KVM Console
With one of the largest and highest-quality resolution (1280 x 1024) KVM console displays in the industry, the Raritan T1900 helps manage servers in data centers, server rooms and other space-critical environments. The T1900 supports servers running Sun®, Windows®, Linux and other operating systems.
Raritan's LCD KVM Consoles -- used in conjunction with KVM switches -- help IT administrators manage the setup, administration and maintenance of rack-mounted servers. From the on-screen display and front-panel controls, IT administrators can switch from server to server easily.
Designed to fit in tight spaces, the 1U console requires a fraction of the space of a full-sized keyboard, monitor and mouse solution. It also consumes less energy than solutions with CRT monitors. The console comes with a combined PS/2 and USB cable, so no additional cables are required.