Adding Intelligence to IT Racks

Ravi Raj

INDIA: Given the massive growth of IT industry and data in general, IT organizations have to constantly reinvent themselves to keep up with emerging trends and opportunities. Trends like Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD), Internet of Things, Cloud Services and Big Data are creating their impact on data centers.

As a result, solution providers have to enhance their products and add new features to accommodate the ever-increasing demands of customers. When it comes to data centers and IT server racks, IT managers are always looking for innovative ways to achieve maximum energy efficiency, resilience and performance while accommodating their changing business needs.

The ever-increasing volume of data places huge demands on data centers that call for intelligent solutions. A recent study by IDC (International Data Corporation) estimates that for every dollar spent on new data center hardware, an additional $0.50 is spent on power and cooling. In order to optimize the utilization of data center infrastructure, solution providers are increasingly opting for 'intelligent' racks that promise more efficient use of power and space. These 'intelligent' data server racks are equipped with multiple features like intelligent PDU, camera surveillance, intelligent locking, smart cooling and UPS all integrated in one rack.

A recent study by Tech Pro Research points out that the cost for maintaining data centers is the biggest problem for the IT industry and suggests the need for better infrastructure to address pain points.Intelligent racks come with features to address these challenges.Features like self-cooling, self - contained locking, power distribution unit, asset management, and consoles can be configured according to the varied business needs of data centers to provide maximum efficiency to company’s data storage center.

These features not only help in saving energy but will also cater other challenges of space availability, functioning capacity, efficient cable management and reduction in weight of racks. According to a study, intelligent racks can boost asset management by as much as 70 per cent.

Apart from ensuring efficiency in energy consumption and space utilization, another big challenge that data center managers have to face is cable management. Maintaining hundreds of cables manually always increases the probability of errors. Therefore, high-density cables with integrated switches and consoles can be helpful in minimizing worries inside data center infrastructure.

Another big advantage is that these racks are generally equipped with capabilities for 'noise reduction' which further increases the efficiency of data centers. Apart from this, 'intelligent' racks also prove most cost-effective due to efficient management of resources. They are like a one-time investment that provides multiple capabilities to meet the varied needs of data centers.

The modern data center is a combination of technologies all working together to help deliver data. Stability, agility and efficiency are the three most important pillars in data center infrastructure, which suppliers need to ensure at the fullest. The era of intelligent rack systems will enable data center managers to achieve much greater efficiencies. With new innovations taking place, the market for intelligent racks is quite bright and hence provides a greater growth opportunity for data center hardware suppliers also.

(Ravi Raj is Brand Head, Director Sales & Support at Netrack. Views expressed here are those of the author and CyberMedia does not necessarily endorse them)