2003 American Power Conversion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, photocopied, transmitted, or
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8
Manageability Imperatives
Imperative
Underlying problems
Solution Requirements
Monitor environmental variables at
the rack
Difficulty in identifying thermal gradients
from the top to the bottom of the rack
which could shutdown and/or damage IT
equipment.
Difficulty in monitoring humidity at the
rack.
Difficulty in detecting smoke at the very
early stages inside a rack.
Graphical user interfaces and automatic
notification which report, manage, and
notify based on environmental
parameters at the rack level.
Monitor power attributes at the rack
level
Difficulty in determining racks that have
high thermal loads, and racks that are
near overload.
Difficulty in associating branch circuit
loads with racks due to constant
reconfiguration.
For dual path systems, difficulty in
determining whether remaining circuits
will overload when one path goes down.
Graphical user interfaces and automatic
notification which report, manage, and
notify based on power attributes at the
rack level.
Ability to remotely and locally monitor
the current drawn from the power
strip(s) located inside each rack. This
is especially helpful after adding new IT
equipment.
Central management of IT equipment Expensive and difficult to individually
manage IT equipment that is distributed
more and more throughout facilities.
Software and hardware solutions that
allow IT administrators to centrally
manage all equipment.
Monitor security at the rack
Racks are the last line of defense against
sabotage to IT equipment but are often
unmonitored.
Graphical user interfaces and automatic
notification which report, manage, and
notify security breaches at the rack
level.
Respondents focused mainly on environmental and power management inside the rack. These
management imperatives closely resemble those discussed in APC white paper #4: "Powering Imperatives
for Data Centers and Network Rooms" and APC white paper #5: "Cooling Imperatives for Data Centers and
Network Rooms". However one unique management imperative that did emerge from the surveys (central
management) was based on the growing popularity of server clusters. More companies are buying higher
quantities of less expensive servers, which lower the cost of routine operations and reduce single points of
failure. According to IDC research vice president, Jean Bozman, the developments in clustering technology
have reduced the complexity involved in installing and maintaining server farms. An IT administrator today
can buy pre-configured clustered server systems that don't require specialized IT skills such as scripting.
According to Dell senior manager of product marketing for clustering, Sanjay Sidhu, clustering is making its
way into mission-critical environments
1
. However, a KVM switch isn't enough to manage all these racks full
of servers, IT personnel want a solution to centrally manage all equipment from one location.
