December 16, 2011 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Data centre manufacturer
Minkels, European producer of integrated data centre solutions for cooling, power distribution and housing, has launched a new product group under the name VariconPower. This concerns a complete product line of Rack PDUs: Power Distribution Units for server racks. The addition of the VariconPower product group, with modules for server room power distribution, expands upon the Minkels strategy to deliver energy-efficient solutions for server rooms and data centres.
The Minkels VariconPower portfolio comprises a complete line of data centre power distribution solutions. The product portfolio ranges from basic Rack PDUs, metered Rack PDUs and monitored (remote) Rack PDUs up to and including monitored & switched (remote) Rack PDUs. Minkels can of course deliver the VariconPower Rack PDUs tailor-made to client-specific wishes and requirements. Available options include 16A or 32A, single-phase or three-phase, and PDUs with or without outlet switching. Also, the Rack PDUs can be delivered as fully integrated and preassembled solutions in combination with other data centre and server room solutions from Minkels.
Rack PDU: Energy Management in Server Room
“Rack PDUs are by no means new products for us,” says Jeroen Hol, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of Minkels. “Although we already delivered Rack PDUs, they were not treated as part of a specific product group. We've recently seen a significant rise in the importance of power distribution within our data centre product portfolio. This is reflected, in particular, by a spectacular increase in demand for intelligent Rack PDUs, which enable management - also remote - of energy consumption in data centre racks. By launching a new product group, we can position Rack PDUs more prominently among the other solutions of Minkels.”
Higher market demand for intelligent Rack PDUs is the logical consequence of increased attention for energy efficiency in server rooms. Hol: “Intelligent Rack PDUs have more functionality than traditional PDUs. The technology engineered into these Rack PDUs facilitates a more detailed zoom of the data centre, making it possible to even measure the power consumption per outlet, in other words at server level. Such an intelligent product provides tools for the direct energy consumption management, e.g. by gathering information via intelligent modules Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), or by remote reading of the PDU and switching the server on and off through a software connection.”
Integrated Data Centre Solutions
The demand for intelligent Rack PDUs is driven not only by the need for energy efficiency in server rooms. Hol: “Security aspects and general server room management considerations are increasingly stated as the reason for clients to opt for an intelligent power distribution solution. With an intelligent PDU you can, for example, measure the energy load of server racks, estimate the maximum permissible energy load and improve the management of energy load and distribution in a server room.”
“As part of the VariconPower product range, we of course still deliver traditional Rack PDUs, thus without intelligent functionality, whether or not preassembled in a data centre rack,” says Hol. “These traditional Rack PDUs can be combined with CT sensor and - as with the intelligent Rack PDUs - be connected to a monitoring and management system such as Minkels Varicontrol DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management). Although not identical in terms of functionality, it remains an effective tool for measuring and analysing the power consumption of a server room, and making changes were necessary. These traditional solutions are most commonly used in existing environments. I am convinced that VariconPower, as a new product group within the Minkels portfolio, will significantly boost the proposition of Minkels as a supplier of integrated data centre solutions for IT infrastructures.”
Whitepaper on PUE
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) data gives server room managers, IT managers, data centre managers, and also general managers, essential tools for energy management and for designing a professional server room or data centre.
Niek van der Pas, PUE specialist at Minkels, has written a whitepaper on this subject: ‘Tips & Tricks for a professional use of PUE as a management tool’. Using a step-by-step approach, the whitepaper gives hands-on insight into how to implement the professional use of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) in an organisation.
The document, which counts 20 pages and is available in English, can be downloaded via: www.minkels.com/whitepaper.
About Minkels
Minkels B.V. is a European manufacturer of total solutions for data centre infrastructure, whose headquarters, R&D department and assembly lines are in the Netherlands (Veghel). The firm has branches in the UK, Switzerland, Belgium and France. Minkels’ product portfolio is subdivided into solutions for data centre cooling (Varicondition), data centre housing (Varicon) and data centre monitoring (Varicontrol). Significant products in the Minkels portfolio are data centre water cooling solutions (Varicondition H2O), hybrid cooling solutions, using both air and water, as well as Varicondition DX Cooling, specifically designed to cool small-scale server rooms. Minkels also has Cold Corridor systems which offer an efficient means of segregating hot and cold air flows in the data centre.
