Schneider Electric has announced the launch of its Apc Netshelter Rack PDU Advanced, providing data centre leaders with greater flexibility to meet the new data demands placed on businesses. Following strong adoption in North America, APC NetShelter Rack PDU Advanced will be expanding to European countries, remaining committed to delivering more value in cloud, service providers, and enterprise customers in critical applications.

The APC NetShelter Rack PDU Advanced enables teams to support up to twice the number of devices and a 50% increase in power needs, while also simplifying installation processes and taking the guesswork out of PDU selection for future IT refreshes.

For many businesses, growing data demands have increased the density of their existing data centre infrastructure. Beyond this, the adoption of high-compute technology as typically seen deployed in enterprise-class data centres either on-premise or co-located and found in applications such as high performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), connected devices (IoT), cryptocurrency, 5G – and even the metaverse – has made density critical. According to a 2020 Uptime Institute report, this power demand has caused a shift in highest density racks falling in the 10-19kW range, not yet warranting a full technology overhaul, but requiring a forward-looking strategy as this trend prevails.

“The digital demand is growing exponentially, and data centre leaders are looking for ways to accommodate rapid technological changes not only in a future-proofed manner, but also in a sustainable one too,” says Tarunjeet Sarao, Senior Vice President, Transactional and Edge Line of Business at Schneider Electric. “The APC NetShelter Rack PDU Advanced is Schneider Electric’s most recent example of addressing our customer needs to help them navigate an evolving landscape. The most agile and adaptable offer to date, APC NetShelter Advanced Rack PDU helps data centres optimise their current investments, support growing data needs, and maximise uptime.”

Improved agility

Understanding the need for layout adjustments or general updates, the APC NetShelter Rack PDU Advanced outlet design avoids costly layout changes. Unlike traditional PDUs with a fixed number of individual outlets, the new four-in-one combination outlets (for C13, C19, C15, and/or C21) simplifies selection, eases and speeds installation, and provides greater flexibility to support future modifications. Additionally, color-coded outlets make the PDU more intuitive and easier to use as the outlet colour matches the upstream circuit breaker. The alternating layout of outlets allows for greater organisation and power cord management of devices installed in the IT rack, speeding installation and optimising the rack space, resulting in reduced human error and increased airflow management.

Support for high density

The APC NetShelter Advanced Rack PDU is designed with the future in mind. To accommodate the ever-increasing number of devices in each rack and subsequent power needs, up to twice the number of outlets provide 50% more power to maximise data centre investments. The APC NetShelter Rack PDU Advanced includes models that can support up to 43.5kW in a single wide (56mm/ 2.2in) form factor to accommodate increasing power requirements per rack. This increase of up to 48 outlets not only prevents having to add more PDUs to existing racks as density rises, but also supports rising trends in taller racks to maximise modern data centres’ rack footprint.

Increased availability

The APC NetShelter Rack PDU Advanced includes five key enhancements to maintain continuity and reduce downtime, including:

• Live Swappable Network Management Card (NMC) which keeps the IT up and running even while servicing the PDUs display in a power event

• Display module power sharing that leverages adjacent NMC power to continue providing user access to PDU data and maintain operations in the event of an upstream PDU power event

• 60ºC/ 140ºF operating temperature reduces risk of failure when operating in hotter high-density environments such as HPC or data centres with higher temperature setpoints for cooling efficiency initiatives

• Dual network ports for increased visibility of network issues and enable colocation applications to utilise one network port and monitor the PDU, and provide the other port for their customer to network in and monitor

• Support for up to eight environmental sensors that allow greater ability to monitor and protect the PDU and IT devices from possible failures related to the environment

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