Raritan Software: Rarin' To Go

Power IQ by Raritan is data center energy management software that enables IT and facility directors to improve data center productivity and energy consumption, as well as increase an organization's power management efficiency.

Power IQ simplifies configuration, firmware management of and data collection for multiple rack PDUs and also provides for accurate monitoring and consumption reports of energy usage and carbon dioxide emission reductions for IT devices, racks, zones, customers and data centers. Security features include standards-based authentication, Web session timeout and IP-based access control.

The software can be deployed as a prebuilt, preconfigured, ready-to-run, virtual appliance capable of running on any VMware platform, including the free VMware ESX3i, or it can be run on Raritan's physical appliance.

The Raritan appliance is a 2U, rack-mountable server with Intel Xeon quad-core CPU, 4 GB of RAM, redundant fans and an Intel dual power supply.

Centralizing power distribution units (PDUs) in an enterprise, Power IQ allows an administrator to create a graphical layout of data centers. It comes with a comprehensive dashboard view to show the health and stats of PDUs. In addition, its data collection and reporting capabilities enable users to generate trend analysis of active power and are open database compliant (ODBC), making it easy to integrate into existing data warehouse and reporting systems to generate custom reports.

Power IQ collects device-level power consumption information from servers and other IT devices plugged into intelligent PDUs, such as Raritan's Dominion PX or a wide range of third-party rack PDUs that include APC, Avocent, Cyber Switching, Geist, HP, MRV and Server Technology. The software also tracks data center temperature and humidity information collected by Raritan's environmental sensors.

As a management tool, the Raritan Power IQ software consolidates names, polling status, location, model and firmware onto one screen. The software can also provide bulk configuration of and firmware distribution for PX PDUs. In addition, automated power control allows for remote power control of outlets, IT devices, device groups and racks, as well as automated load shedding.

Power IQ provides valuable information and automated control that can help improve efficiencies in the data center right away, including:

Baseline data center energy usage by IT device, rack, zone, customer, department and data center

Measurement of energy improvements

Understanding of which systems are candidates for consolidation

At-the-rack temperature measurement to identify areas to adjust cooling

Energy cost bill-back reports with one click

Tracking changes in carbon footprint

Remote power on/off and automated power control, saving energy and equipment

Trending to easily see usage trends

The ability to create "what if" reports to review historical results of planned changes

The software is available in licenses of various capacities from 10 to 1,000 devices, and upgrades are offered in 10-device and 20-device packages. A device license capacity upgrade does not require any hardware changes.