Power strip overload protection

[KenB]

Originally Posted by Keith

With running circuits at 80%, you should not have an issue with overloading a circuit unless someone were to plug in a massive shop vac in to your power strip

A great topic! Here in the US, many data centers (ours included) are replacing 120V NEMA services with IEC style receptacles at 208V for power connections to critical equipment, in part to discourage people from using rack power for tools and appliances. Clear labeling helps protect personnel and equipment in these situations. This issue will become more important as 400V to the racks becomes popular.

Ken

[Rmgill]

Originally Posted by Keith

The debate of whether or not to use a fuse of a circuit breaker is kind of unsettling in a forum such as this. A properly ran datacenter should have capacity planning methods put in place to mitigate the risk of overloading a circuit. You should never exceed 80% capacity on a circuit. With running circuits at 80%, you should not have an issue with overloading a circuit unless someone were to plug in a massive shop vac in to your power strip to do some cleanup; in which case, a circuit breaker would be ideal because you would want to just be able to hit the reset button on the strip instead of replace a fuse.

There's planning, Bad planning, Murphy and then...



Murphy re-enacarnated as one of your co-workers.



I've had a co-worker plug a device in of their own volition through labels saying "circuit full do not plug in here".

I've had a co-worker plug a device in and make contact with a system rack slide at the same time. BZZZT

I have had a co-worker stand on an Automatic Transfer Switch, thus grounding out the high voltage contacts, tripping BOTH circuits and vaporizing the contacts for most of the high voltage traces.

One cannot plan for all problems nor can one prevent all problems. That's why breakers are re-setable and fuses can be replaced relatively easily. Used to be things had fusible links or just burst into flames (or exploded).

[FrankB]

We have just recently started using the Server Tech 60 AMP 3 phase power strip for our blade deployments. Before that we were using the APC 7898 strips. We also use the APC 7894, 7841 strips as well.

Breaker versus fuses could go either way IMO. There are other factors that need to be considered. In order to use the Servertech strip we had to use a 30" wide cabinet. That strip is considerably deeper than the APC strip and we needed the additional room of the wider cabinet to reseat power supplies and network modules in the blade chassis.

We also like the ability to monitor the Servertech strips with only 1 IP address, adde to that the ability to get temperature without another piece of hardware.

Long story short, for our blade application the Servertech was the better strip. We are still deploying plenty of cabinets though with the APC strips.