Rack Power solution

[Chris Coston]

We use HP racks in our data center. We used to run two 20 amp circuts to each rack. This was fine for the old larger servers. Now days the small U servers pull too many amps to only run two circuts. Recently, we have tripped a few circuts by miscalculating the amperage pull required. What would be ideal is a real time amperage meter in the power strip. Is anyone aware of a good solution for rack power or a way to avoid the overload of a circuit.

[Jonas Back_2]

We have the same problem. Not that we reach the 16 AMP (which we have) but we fear that if one circuit breaks the other one will too since all servers switch over to that circuit only (two PSU's in each server).

I think our electricians have some kind of device to simply wrap around the cable and that can measure the amps used. However I think it was thought of more using which extremely high values (like the cable going to the gigantic UPS we have) so it wasn't an option for small values like 20 amps. However you might want to check that out.

Another idea I had was to put meters in each circuit but I guess that would be expensive.

So what we did was to make sure to have a "standard" for each rack, specifying how many servers and which models to make sure we don't have this problem... But human mistakes could happened so I guess it's not best practice.

[Scott Wilson_8 · Accepted solution]

We have started to deploy a new Power Distribution Unit from APC that integrates an amp meter into the unit. It displays the current being drawn by the load attached and can be network attached to raise alarms if current draw exceeds thresholds. Chech this URL: http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=136&tab=models