Cross-Connect Blog

What’s in a Data Center and What Do We Offer to Make It Better?

January 07, 2010

Some things you may find in a data center:

  • Grounding equipment
  • Raised floors
  • Computer room air conditioners and cooling systems
  • Power distribution
  • Servers and switches (commonly called “boxes with lights that do magic things”)
  • Ways to monitor and control those “Boxes with lights”
  • Cable pathways
  • People to manage and ensure security of the above

What we offer and how it works to make your data center design better:

Grounding - CPI offers a wide variety of grounding and bonding equipment from pipe clamps withof from pipe clamps with ground conductors, pedestal clamps with ground conductors, antioxidant compounds, grounding straps, grounding wire, bus bars, grounding lugs, and Insulators. With these products you can create a Signal Reference Grid (SRG), as well as ensure proper grounding and bonding (earthing) for all products, ensuring optimal equipment performance and personal safety, as well as meeting local code and manufacturer’s performance standards.Under-Floor Systems

Raised floors - We offer a selection of raised floor boxes to secure and protect equipment under the floor during a build out to house delicate connections from the initial installation until you are ready to place a cabinet in place and bring the cables out into the cabinet to complete the connections, or to provide you with some flexible design solutions. We offer both plenum and non-plenum solutions. CPI also offers our OnTrac™ Wire Mesh Cable Tray for routing and protecting your cables in the under-floor space.

Computer room air conditioners and cooling systems - We offer a cabinet with an innovative design (F-Series TeraFrame® Cabinet) that will reduce the cost required to cool your data center by using CPI Passive Cooling®. You can also employ hot aisle, cold aisle technology equally well with our TeraFrame cabinets with perforated metal front and rear doors, or use the equipment’s inherent cooling method to create a “closed loop” system that will reduce the hot air in the data center without adding the expense of fans or the energy require to cool the cabinet. How it works is simple. Your CRAC units provide cool air to the front of the cabinets, the equipment draws air into the cabinet through the perforated metal front doors, (ensuring the equipment is properly sealed with air dams and filler panels) and the hot air exits the equipment into the rear of the cabinet, where it is greeted with a solid rear door and deflected that directs it up the back of the cabinet to the vertical exhaust duct, and into the plenum above (that has slight negative pressure) that is providing the air directly to the CRAC.

Power Management ApplicationPower distribution - Once again you spoke and we listened. You demanded smarter power solution where you could not only provide power to your equipment, but you also wanted to be able to meter and monitor the power to see how your efficiency is. We met that request with PDU solutions that offer a lot of power in a small space (PowerWedge); solutions that will allow you to monitor the environment to see potential trouble spots (humidity and temperature sensors); as well as international solutions. We have also increased our product line to meet your growing power needs. We have three phase and high amperage options available that will allow you to better control your costs. We also have optional port monitoring as well as rack level solutions to choose from.Infrastructure Management Products

Servers and switches - We offer power management solutions that can cycle these devices on and off in a controlled and methodically safe way. We can marry up both power supplies on a server and when you secure the power on one leg, instead of it switching over, it automatically cycles the power on the other circuit so your devices restarts as you intended with minimal intervention. You can also use our IP and local KVM solutions to control and reduce costs by reducing the number of keyboards, monitors, cables and space required for each server.

Ways to monitor - We have high end PDUs that work with SNMP traps to alert you (your compatible software) of changes that you have set as thresholds. We also have Industry leading and innovative SEMA software that will not only monitor but record your energy usage over the entire enterprise. (through port monitoring or rack level monitoring) This will benefit you in locating higher cost systems that can be either retired or secured so your dollars per computing power is maximized.

Cable Runway Application

Pathways - CPI has for years lead in not only the major pathway solutions but also the horizontal, and local to the rack or cabinet pathways that meet both fiber and copper requirements, including CAT 6A. We also offer a design assistants team that will help you develop a BOM from your design or work with your design team to insure that the correct products are selected (we specialize in “out of the box” thinking).

People to manage - Our monitoring and security solutions, allow you to economize your work force by being managing the entire enterprise from one location (even remote and back up sites) You can use the SEMA software to manage the servers, check status, trouble shoot, and reboot them. You can also monitor temperature and humidity, as well as a host of other environmental parameters. With the RIM-600 you can also use cameras, smoke detectors, heat detectors, Water detectors, control electronic door locks on the cabinets, all from remote locations.

If you have a question or comment about these products please use the comment link below or give us a call at 800-834-4969 or email techsupport @chatsworth.com. Tom Bradley, Technical Support Supervisor

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