Power strips of choice
 

I have been running a data center now for the past year and a half...and being right out of college, I've learned quite a bit in a very short time. But one thing I've picked up on, there is always something out there I don't know about and won't know about until I or someone else talks to others about it.

When I started, we were 100% 120v, except for mainframes and free-standing SAN pieces. Most power was 20amp vertical power strips in some racks...while other racks would have 120v 30am twist-lock horizontal strips. We started using Geist metered 120v vertical strips in an attempt to monitor how much power we were using per rack so that we could maintain our redundancy for failover.

This worked fine until we started getting Sun equipment in that was 208v only...v890s and v490s. We purchased some Geist 208v 208v solutions, but were being charged $1200 for a pair....and I was needing many many pairs. I finally found APC 7841 power strips that fit the bill nicely. One thing that affected my decision is the bulge at the bottom of the strips (bottom being where the power cable enters the strip) on the Geist were massive...the APC's bulge was less than half the size. The APC strips also allowed for networking to be connected to monitor the strips via SNMP. I've been told the 7941 model also allows for the switching of individual power ports on/off. The best part of the 7841s is the price. I've found at ProVantage.com, they sell for about $340 each...cheaper than my vendor can buy them!


So, who uses what? What works best/worst about them?

The APC strips are nice, but I hate that they're upside down. I realize this is for compatability with ovhead power, like they do with their InfrastruXure product line, but it makes the things awkward for subfloor power users. They're bulky, too, which takes up a lot of cable room when you're using two.

I like the dual strips from BayTech and Server Technology. We're rolling out 30A, 3ph ServerTech units (model Smart CDU 84-DD -- sounds busty!) into our commodity racks at the moment. I like being able to run power on one side and data on the other. As we get into blades, we'll have to customize a solution for whichever vendor(s) we choose, since there aren't any standards there.

Ken

you do have a good point about the APCs. I have noticed that at least on a few the numbers are upside down. We do run a subfloor. I had thought that at least some of them were oriented correctly...but not completely sure. I've been trying to get into the configuration...hoping an orientation option would be in there, but I haven't had quality time to sit down with it.

just slightly off topic, do you put all like hardware in a rack? My racks are mixed hardware...so some cable management goes to the right and some to the left...it wouldn't be possible to put all power on one side and all cabling on the other.

I try to sort hardware by project, which ends up mixing makes and models in each rack. As we've increased in density, we've started throwing away cable management arms, since they block airflow and just get in the way of increased cabling.

Ken

Upside down? I have used APCs on both raised and overhead. They have the ability to flip the text on the screen to so you can mount them cord up or cord down.

I know a lot of people push ServerTech products and I was once in love with them. Then came the management module issues that I had. I literally had atleast 1 power strip management module stop working each week. I had to tell our sales guy to send us 10 standby modules that we could swap out at any given time. The modules arent supposed to be hot-swappable but we had no choice. On one occassion, however, I was replacing a module in a live strip and the entire strip went dark. Customers were not happy; neither was I!

Also, I was really turned off by the price of the servertech strips. I believe we were paying $1,000 per strip back in the day. APC released their strip for $370.


Just my $.02

Keith, looking at my 7841, the button to flip the LED display is a little misleading. The button is labled with the direction "Hold button to invert display". I'm not sure why, but I had thought if you did that, you'd invert the colors...having the numbers dark and the surrounding area lit up. hehe...now they are all oriented correctly.

Keith,
Thanks for the info. We haven't had your experience with the ServerTech strips, so maybe they fixed the problem. Also, thanks very much for your tip about inverting the APC strips! The "bulb" at the whip end of the APC strips is still a problem, though. I wish ServerTech made a dual 3ph strip with a mix of C13 and C19 outlets -- that would be perfect.

Ken

Ken,

I was just finishing up with some of the last moves of a migration. All of the racks that I inherited had ServerTech power strips (120v 20amp 16 outlet). Not bad strips at all. Console management was odd as I had to use the latest version of Putty to use DSR/DTR flow control (HyperTerminal does not have that option). We also noticed that with a row of racks with these guys in...when the alarm buzzer goes off...it took us a few minutes to figure out which one was going off.

OK. I hate doing this but I am going to wake this thread up from the dead.

Ken made a great point about the C19 plugs. I hate the fact that to get a strip that allows reboots or monitoring you have to put up with 24 c13 and 3 c19s. I need it the other way around as I have blade servers that use c19 plugs. With a blade server requiring 4 power supplies to be redundant, you end up with 2 blade chassis in a rack that you cant plug in the last power supply on both servers.

Does anybody know of a rebootable PDU that has more than 3 C19 outlets? These will be all 3ph strips at 208 (most of the time, our colo provider cant seem to deliver more than 201v but thats a whole nother thread!)

Thanks!

I've done a lot of looking at power strips and have come to the conclusion that the doubled up Server Technology units are a bad idea. Not only are they utilizing a very cheap method of over-current protection (fuses) they also have both sources of power in one unit. What happens if one half decides to fail for one reason or another? You have to pull the entire strip to replace it, there goes the concept of redundancy.

I'm currently using APC strips at one site, but for the new data center I'm building it could go to a number of manufacturers although it will likely be Epicenter or Liebert for their L2130 units.

When faced with C19 issues, I've typically gone out and bought C14 - C19 cords and got around that hurdle, haven't had a situation where these wouldn't work.. yet.