Data Center Cabinet: Foundation for Complete Ecosystem

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to evolve and Edge Computing, which pushes applications, data and computing services away from centralized data centers, is becoming more common. Managing assets and white space remotely can be a challenge.

To make this simple, data center managers should look at the data center cabinet, not just as a point product, but as a foundation of a complete ecosystem.

Ashish Moondra, Chatsworth Products’ (CPI) Sr. Product Manager of Power, Electronics & Software lists four key considerations for a successful cabinet ecosystem:

1. Integrated Power, Environmental Monitoring and Access Control: CPI's enclosures are optimized for data center environments. When combined with CPI's eConnect® Power Distribution Units (PDU) these enclosures securely and effectively support remotely manageable hardware, providing integrated power, environmental information and electronic access control into one consolidated surface. 
   
   
2. Quick Deployment: The ability to have PDUs and electronic locks preinstalled within a cabinet prior to shipping saves significant deployment time, as well as eliminates the need to deal with packaging.
   
   
3. Reduced Networking Cost: Overall networking costs can be greatly reduced with CPI's Secure Array™ IP Consolidation, which allows ups to 32 PDUs to use a single IP address.
   
   
4. DCIM Solution: A centralized data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution can auto discover all integrated manageable hardware within cabinets, providing health and status information covering power and environmental parameters, as well as the status of electronic locks and cabinet doors. CPI's Power IQ® works with eConnect PDUs to provide this insight.

Overall, it is important to consider a complete cabinet ecosystem approach that incorporates an integrated hardware solution, all networked through very few IP addresses and managed centrally through a plug–and-play software. 

Read more in Moondra’s most recent article “The Cabinet is Critical to Managing Edge Compute Sites for IoT.”

Shannon Erdley, Public Relations Specialist