Professional data centre managers need to know how much power and energy is being used by the power strips plugged into their data centre machinery and by having power strips with built-in remote monitoring their job is therefore made so much easier.

Power strips available to buy in Britain vary from cheap white plastic versions imported en mass, normally from China to commercial, top-of-the range, metal-encased strips that are designed to fit into 19″ rack cabinets primarily used in data centres and on server farms.

Cheap power strips can certainly do the job and for domestic use (e.g. running a home entertainment system) they are probably the best option, definitely in terms of cost if not reliability. But, when used in a commercial environment such as a data centre, where there are usually hundreds of such strips providing power to a range of servers and other electrical machinery, reliability is the measure that is valued over cost.

If power strips installed in a commercial environment kept fusing or otherwise malfunctioning, just because they were cheap, it would be unacceptable. Indeed, the downtime resulting from such a strategy could be catastrophic in terms of both a loss of core business and also for the future of the data centre manager’s employment prospects!

Of course, it doesn’t always follow that the most expensive power strips will be the best, but like most things in life you tend to get what you pay for and for those seeking reliability, performance and guarantees it comes at a price. But, rather than install power strips that display no indication of their performance, data centre managers are increasingly turning to units that incorporate remote KWh monitoring with environmental monitoring.

Such units are capable of monitoring power (i.e. Volts/Amps/Power Factor) and energy use and logging the results remotely. In addition, the environment in which they are operating can also be monitored due to external sensors fitted to the unit, thus allowing users to see if there are any power spikes or troughs on the unit or in its surroundings.

Such intelligence when it comes to operating power strips is considered essential by experienced data centre managers, the majority of whom would not approve the fitting of power strips without some monitoring capability. Remote monitoring is even better as it allows the manager to be able to keep track of such units within the data centre by logging into a browser, via an in-built HTTP server. Alternatively and additionally the unit’s performance can be viewed and logged through a building or network management system using SNMP, or even imported directly into a SQL database using XML data output.

With such features available the higher cost of buying remote KWh monitoring power strips pays back for itself many times over in terms on increased efficiency, keeping both the company and subsequently, the data centre manager extremely happy!