Arch Rock Corporation, a developer of IP-enabled wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies, has recently launched a range of software connectors.
Arch Rock Energy Optimizer
These connectors are for use in Arch Rocks’ energy monitoring product called Energy Optimizer. The connectors will facilitate the correlation and analysis of energy data hitherto located on multi-vendor servers, cooling and power system components, and building management systems (BMS).
The five newly launched connectors present a number of interfaces and protocols. They are Comma Separated Values (CSV), Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Simple Object Access Protocol/Representational State Transfer (SOAP/REST), and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
These connectors enable Energy Optimizer to provide easy and direct access of almost any related environmental and energy data, besides the data collected by wireless sensors of Rock already, as well as data received from BMS systems, air handler elements, chiller elements, internal elements of power distribution unit (PDU), and individual servers.
The data will empower building and data center managers to thoroughly understand their thermal and electrical installations and calculate power usage effectiveness (PUE) more easily. These managers are also empowered to select the optimum cost-effective likely energy management options by integrating sensed data from cooling, power, or computing device sensors along with thermal, power, or wireless environmental sensors.
Leading industry products, such as Dell PowerEdge Servers, Emerson Liebert SiteScan, IBM iDataPlex PDUs, and Schneider APC Rack PDUs, are utilizing these Energy Optimizer connectors already. These standards defined connectors ensure that Energy Optimizer is compatible with a large range of additional products and vendors.
Roland Acra, CEO of Arch Rock, revealed that a large quantity of data that is collected by expensive BMS, individual servers, chillers, and air handlers is often stranded in a user interface of a particular vendor, depicting only a portion of the energy picture to users. Acra has questioned the utility of having data related to the spinning speed of fans in air handlers if the data cannot be correlated with inlet/outlet temperatures of server racks. Acra has further clarified that Energy Optimizer is now able to tap and display all this data and also correlates with information provided by wireless sensor networks of Arch Rock. Acra has explained that such unified data provides users with a more in-depth understanding of thermal and electrical conditions in their facilities, empowering them to act in time to address problems or increase capacity. Acra said that users are able to compare results received from external and internal sensors for precision, and in some of the cases achieve radical savings by integrating data from non-intrusive, easily deployable and device-enabled sensors.
By using web services, XML, and CSV Interfaces Optimizer could export data for other applications already. The new connectors set for importing data renders Energy Optimizer the unique open energy monitoring product in the market.
The Energy Optimizer Connectors are used in a data center of a major university. Utilizing the IPMI connector, the data center extracts data related to CPU temperature from 42 servers in every rack and then displays the data on the dashboard of the system, thereby enabling setting up temperature alerts for the data center environment. The same IPMI connector also enables the data center to extract data related to CPU power and fan speed, and compare it with inlet/outlet temperature data of the server rack collected by internal server sensors and Arch Rock servers.