Electrical Safety for Server and Rack Monitoring

An IT environment requires either an in-house server room or a service from an external data center operator. This server room must be easily accessible, and the power supply must be secured, so it is fail-safe. Monitored power distribution boards have active measured value recording and AC/DC sensitive fault current monitoring. This helps to optimize energy use and protect against unwanted interruptions of power circuits.

User-definable threshold values and local or remote alarms highlight and warn of any errors. They also aid in reducing the risk of unwanted shutdown or overloading of power circuits. They record fault current monitoring and energy consumption data and are available in real-time so that data center managers can make sound decisions. The decisions needing to be made might be about necessary maintenance measures, load distribution, the correct sizing of the IT environments, and more. All of these factors contribute to reducing overall operating costs.

According to BITKOM, a leading association for the digital economy, their planning guide for operationally safe data centers states that one or more ground-fault monitoring systems must be used in the feed to the racks to guarantee continuous monitoring without shutdown. All information collected by the Bender RCMS is forwarded via a gateway to a permanently staffed office, such as the control center. Alternately, PDUs with built-in Bender intelligence are also sometimes used.

Uninterrupted operations of the server and rack monitoring system are critical to overall data center operations. It is essential to have secure, cost-effective IT and server rooms that offer maximum availability. As failures and breakdowns within these systems and facilities can be costly, the permanent control of the quality of the electric power source allows any problems to be detected quickly and provides the necessary personnel the ability to tackle them effectively.