Cross-Connect Blog

2022 BICSI Winter Recap: What You Most Wanted to Know

February 10, 2022

After two years of virtual learning and networking, Chatsworth Products (CPI) was thrilled to join participants in-person at last week’s 2022 BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, FL.

During an action-packed week that saw CPI’s Motive® Cable Manager featured in the seminal BICSI Cabling Skills Challenge (check out the time lapse below) and the official appointment of CPI’s Product Manager for Open Systems, David Richards, as the President-Elect of BICSI’s Board of Directors for 2022-2023 (check out our photo album from the show to see more)—the show itself was a great opportunity for CPI experts to meet with a variety of customers and colleagues to discuss a whole host of topics and help address today’s most pressing ICT infrastructure challenges and questions.

Vidyard video
After the event, we spoke with the CPI experts who fielded these discussions and want to recap here for you what attendees most wanted to know, because it’s likely if they wanted to know, it’s on your mind, too. Ready to take a spin?

Vidyard video
So, CPI offers power management and control products?


Yes! CPI has been in the power business for 30 years. We offer a variety of power strips and over 350 configurations of both vertical and horizontal intelligent eConnect® PDUs that are designed to deliver high availability of infrastructure compute. From Basic to Switched and Monitored intelligence levels, the functionality of CPI’s eConnect PDUs—along with our expertise—helps data center managers optimize their operations (remotely, too) by enhancing security, efficiency, equipment performance and provide a relatively short ROI.
Watch a video to learn how.

Tell me more about CPI’s power and cabinet ecosystem solution.
At a high level, CPI’s power and cabinet ecosystem serves to simplify overall white space management, and helps data center managers make faster, smarter decisions about how they operate their data center(s). But what’s that really mean? At its heart, it’s the subsystems in the rack or cabinet that form an ecosystem of components, all working together to power and support ICT equipment. Taking it a step further, by integrating the data center cabinet with hardware and software into a single platform (ideally, from a single supplier), data center managers stand to truly gain visibility and understanding of the different dynamics within their facilities to make more informed decisions.

The hardware includes CPI’s intelligent eConnect PDUs, highly configurable ZetaFrame™ Cabinet, and a slew of enhanced cable and airflow management accessories and bonding and grounding components to tie it all together.

The software includes eConnect PDU software, which provides an easy and intuitive interface to view information such as branch and outlet power measurement, alarm states, outlet grouping, and more, while other powerful data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software offerings yield even more insights to expand your capabilities.

And of course, when you can get all this from a single supplier and manufacturer—CPI—you benefit from the consistent ease of use, customer service and everything else that brings it all together to provide the most holistic approach and value that a single, scalable power and cabinet ecosystem can provide.      
Watch a video to learn more.

I’m looking to remotely manage my data center. How can CPI help optimize my operations, even remotely?
CPI’s intelligent eConnect PDUs offer intelligent remote management capability for continual automated monitoring. Features such as the ability to set thresholds and get notifications or alerts when warning or critical thresholds are exceeded are crucial. Plus, data logging to keep records for analysis is important. Generally, there is a one-to-one association between a branch circuit on a floor PDU and the input of a rack PDU. Hence, monitoring of the rack PDU provides an additional benefit of monitoring branch circuit currents on those upstream power chain devices.

eConnect PDUs also provide outlet level monitoring and switching, which helps to reduce the energy footprint of the IT equipment by enabling monitoring of power consumption at the outlet level, and allows outlets to be controlled by the rack PDUs administrator.

Simplified load balancing, IP consolidation, high ambient temperature and outlet density offer additional efficiencies, and future-proof the ability to optimize operations.

Finally, integration with DCIM software enables the ability to plot and trend energy use and helps visualize patterns, as well as identify the root cause of out-of-bounds conditions. This illuminates the need to move a workload or a piece of equipment to another rack or retire underutilized equipment.
Read a white paper to dig deeper.

What are the advantages of the CPI’s ZetaFrame™ Cabinet System?
CPI’s newest cabinet, the ZetaFrame™, is a highly-configurable, single solution cabinet that offers speedy deployment, fast selection and customization, future-proof strength, integrated bonding, enhanced cable management and integrated airflow management. It is also the foundation of our power and cabinet ecosystem.
Learn more.

I didn’t realize you had edge enclosures… can you tell me more?
As edge deployments increase, CPI’s RMR® Industrial Enclosures have become more popular, as well. They are the first line of defense for sensitive and expensive equipment, and CPI’s RMR enclosures include specialized seals for cable openings in order to maintain a variety of NEMA Type ratings, including 12 (IP55), 4 and 4x (IP66) protection ratings and options for disconnect switches and circuit breakers. CPI’s full line of RMR enclosures provide third-party certification, robust construction, precision, configurability, customization and personalization.
Read an e-book.

I’m looking for a cable management and pathway solution that is simple to use and expedites my cable drops.
You came to the right place. CPI’s Adjustable Cable Runway serves to do exactly that. In fact, it solves the issue of cross-members that interfere with a planned cable drop into a data center cabinet completely. Unlike traditional welded cable runway, the Adjustable Cable Runway's design facilitates easy relocation of a cross-member by the simple removal of only two screws, expediting your cable drops, while increasing both network integrity and your efficiency.

Additionally, you can use the same splices and supports that are used with traditional ladder rack, or you can further simplify your installation with CPI's tool-less radius drops and dividers. 
Watch a tech tip.

While there were so many more impactful discussions and questions for our experts, we’ve highlighted just a few common ones here in the hopes they provide insight and value to your daily job. If you have additional questions or comments, please use the comment box and we’ll get back to you!

If you happened to be at BICSI, it was so good to see you! And, if you weren’t able to attend, good news… you can still register for the virtual edition of the event, which includes CPI’s virtual booth and is free and open to participants until March 3! Here’s the registration link.
Posted by Brittany Mangan, Digital Content Specialist at 2/10/2022 8:52:52 AM
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