Data Center Power Monitoring: How DCIM Software Can Help

Editor’s Note: Portions of this post were originally published on May 12 by our DCIM partner, Sunbird Software.

Accurate data center power monitoring is critical for managing modern data center environments successfully. With many data centers rapidly running out of capacity and energy costs increasing, it’s more important than ever to know how much power is being used, when you expect to run out of capacity, and where you can make improvements to boost data center efficiency.

Data center power monitoring can help you with all these things and more. However, with the massive amounts of data points generated by your power distribution units (PDUs), UPSs, CRACs, and other devices, you need data center monitoring software to help collect the data and then transform it into useful information.

That’s where Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software comes in.

How DCIM Software Enhances Power Monitoring in Your Data Center

Most modern data centers house a significant number of devices, including rack and floor PDUs, UPSs, CRACs, power panels, standalone meters, environmental sensor aggregators, and other facility items. The wide range of devices results in similarly large amounts and variety of data. Each of these devices contributes to your power usage, so it’s ideal to be able to collect data from all of them at the most granular level possible for the highest level of accuracy.

DCIM software helps you rapidly discover (through autodiscovery of supported devices on a network) and poll these devices and then use the information to glean insights about power and energy usage in your data center. For example, outlet-level metering is available with some intelligent rack PDUs. When combined with DCIM software, you’re able to know not only the exact amount of power consumed but also who is using it.

In addition to monitoring the power usage of the devices in your data center, DCIM software takes the data collected directly from your devices and displays it in dashboards and visualization charts. You don’t need to worry about inaccurate data or poor data quality with DCIM software since the data is taken directly from the devices. Based on this data, visual analytics are created automatically by the software to help you rapidly engage with and analyze your data for deeper, more meaningful insights—if you know what to look for.

Power IQ^® for eConnect 

Chatsworth Products (CPI) has partnered with Sunbird Software, a leading innovator in DCIM solutions to co-brand Power IQ^® for eConnect^®, a vendor agnostic data center monitoring solution with out-of-the-box compatibility with eConnect PDUs that provides all of the benefits described above.

For more information on Power IQ for eConnect, visit the product page, or test drive the software here.

Sunbird Software