Power Management Simplified

Power management is a real headache for businesses today. Not only do you have to factor in the nature of the power disruption, but you also need a host of solutions that cater for end-to-end power management and monitoring from the DB board to the server room.

Knowing the problem

Power management has to be holistic, you have to protect your devices from the external source, for example the power utilities pole, right back to your server room and no one solution can do it all. In short, you need multiple devices in the process.

But first, let’s consider the nature of a power surge or spike, not all created equal. Some surges are high in voltage but last for a short amount of time, whereas others are low in voltage but can take a long time to reach their full impact. As an example, our experts say that a lightning strike is very different to a loss of power quality or a surge in power across the utilities line. A power spike / surge has different components, namely a fast and slow component to the way that they behave.

Also you can’t just protect the power from outside, you also need to protect it in the side – in short from the distribution box to the server room / datacentre and everywhere inbetween.

This means you must use and match the appropriate monitoring or protection devices. The challenge here is that your power management solutions should know the difference and behave accordingly.

We suggest you don’t just settle but opt for a solution that has monitorability on the device. In other words, a device that will trip the switch if there is a surge (therefore doing its job) is great, but you also need to know if these devices are still in good working order and are still protectiong your equipment, or if they have been damaged by the change in voltage.

At the Distribution Board

In order to help with power management at the distribution board we offer a mountable monitored surge protection solution by way of our NLFC1S350/NLFC3S350 devices. These also cater for both single- and three-phase power environments (depending on the unit).

Furthermore, they come with a fixed wired base that can be wired directly into your distribution board with the actual unit being pluggable for ease of maintenance. They also come in a lightning current and surge arrester combination which means they will cover you for both high and low voltage situations. If you have more than one distribution board we suggest you install them at each board and not just the main board outside of your building.

For Self-Contained Cabinets

The self-contained cabinet has grown in popularity over the years as they provide a fully managed and monitored environments in your server room. They can be packed with a host of devices that monitor the equipment inside and protect them from untoward incidents.

However, if you have these cabinets in your server room, but you don’t have power management inside of them its best you look at investing in it urgently. Just because they are self-contained does not mean they are immune from power issues. With our Netshield equipment cabinet controllers you can leverage a device that combines combine both remote environmental management and surge protection on the unit.

These controllers are perfect for equipment stage surge and lightning protection and come complete with Electrical VAC power measurement, monitoring protection and are available as rack mountable units.

In a Cabinet in the Server Room

Yet another power management device we supply that is ideal for a cabinet in the server room is our cloud or network managed Smart Zero U Power Distribution Units (PDUs). These enable you to remotely monitor current, voltage, power, energy usage and environmental conditions.

When installed you can also rely on your Smart PDU to alert an administrator of potential circuit overloads and nominal consumption increases, they also allow for remote power switching for emergency shutdowns and can via and/or a Web interface, SNMP or MQTT, relay user-definable alarms with real-time alerts when power has been compromised.

With these you also have the option to add temperature, humidity and fluid monitoring sensors as part of an overall IoT solution.

In Summary

Our extensive range of Netshield power management solutions can either be installed in the distribution board or close to your equipment. They don’t just manage the behaviour of your power system in the case of surges, spikes or lightning, but they also have onboard indicators and are able to relay information to your monitoring environment via an extensive range of Netshield IoT Gateways and monitoring devices. This means you are always in the know if your equipment has been damaged.

We are proud that they are the result of decades-long evolution of best-in-class power surge, power management and environmental monitoring devices from the Netshield stable.