Raritan brings low-cost management intelligence to the datacenter

When you picture hardware rack management devices for the datacenter, one of the elements of that image is a very large price tag. But with the EMX Smart Rack Controller, Raritan has an entry level price for their centralized rack management hardware that starts at under $400.

Raritan's Smart Rack Controllers work with their environmental sensors, energy management software, asset management tracking tags, and their datacenter infrastructure management software. This allows the user to instrument the physical infrastructure of their datacenter and use real-time data to monitor and manage the facility.  Their asset monitoring system allows for hardware to be tracked and located through the datacenter facility. Support is primarily for the Raritan line of products and sensors, but standard connections are available for use with other vendor power distribution units.

Hardware management allows administrators to track everything from environmental conditions to who opened the rack door last. Configurations allow various types of sensors and give the datacenter administrator more than just a virtual view of the physical infrastructure but actual data on what is happening environmentally, with security, and operationally.

With the low initial price point the Raritan hardware makes a lot of sense for small datacenters and server rooms. As facilities grow, additional or more capable EMX units can be added to the infrastructure to expand monitoring capabilities.  While not my solution of choice for existing large-scale datacenters, the Raritan EMX Smart Rack Controller and it sensor suite looks like an excellent way for smaller facilities to expand upon these critical infrastructure management technologies for their datacenters.