Raritan DCIM, Power Management Solutions Cut Light-Outs at Choice Hotel’s Data Centers

New Delhi, Bangalore: Raritan, a primary provider of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) and rack power distribution solutions, DCIM and power management solutions have efficaciously accomplished to condense light-outs at ChoiceHotels. By means of Raritan’s complete solution, Choice Hotels now have incessant entrée and control on each and every facet of the infrastructure shorn of being on-site24 x 7. Raritan’s secure gateway has further streamlined the maneuvers by providing a single pane-of-glass console access contrasted with every KVM switch’s IP address and servers behind it. Choice Hotels now have to discern one IP address, with the aid of which they will see every server and its functioning.

The Choice Hotels, the major bed and board corporations in the world has its global reservation system that handles all hotel dealings. Whichever updates or vicissitudes made in the status of reservations, cancellations, etc. of rooms by the guest in any of the 500,000 guest rooms across the eleven franchises of Choice Hotels used to run through Choice’s data center.

Every disruption in service could result in lost revenue and would also lead to the discontent of the customers. The dare was to make the move and operate the new “lights-out” data center which was situated more than an hour away from the IT team. The next trial was to retain a tab on assets and this way around, whether third-party collocations personnel move correct server/equipment. Plus the concluding challenge was to track energy usage and ecological conditions in remote cabinets.

As a part of the solution evaluation procedure, Choice Hotels visited a number of colocation facilities to acquire as to how auxiliary companies coped with their remote data centers and learnt that Raritan solutions was on top in terms of remote management capabilities in power, KVMand DCIM. Henceforward Choice Hotels cherry – picked Raritan solutions.

The iPDUs served as an intelligent platform for environmental monitoring. Choice Hotels also procured Raritan’s humidity/temperature sensors that plug into the iPDU sensor port. For supplementary insights, information gathered by the iPDUs and sensors were analyzed and monitored by Raritan’s Power IQ energy management software.

This software tracks power consumption trends for each of Choice’s servers, including those with dual- and quad-power supplies. The analytics component will show which devices may be operating inefficiently based on energy consumption trends, whether power conservation efforts are working, and if there are hot spots or over-cooled areas. The information serves as an early indicator of trouble.

To access servers, including VMware servers, from anywhere, Choice Hotels added digital KVM switches to its new colo data center. It also implemented Raritan’s Command Center Secure Gateway to simplify access to equipment connected to all the KVMs. Raritan’s in-the-rack electronic asset management solutions ensures that third-party colo personnel work on the correct equipment. The asset management strip’s LED lights blink to identify the correct server to work on. In addition, each server has an asset tag that sends a signal when a server is installed or disconnected. It also aids Choice Hotels keep accurate, real-time inventory of servers and other IT assets.

To further help workers in identifying equipment in the data center, Choice Hotels decided to use Raritan’s color iPDUs and cables in red and blue. The colors help distinguish between A feeds and B feeds for powering servers and other devices with multiple power supplies. Color also makes it easier to identify and locate rack PDUs, and all power chain components, at a distance, from any angle and in all lighting situations.

The DCIM solution replaced the spreadsheets which were earlier used by Choice Hotels to track assets, and will provide new capabilities such as managing power and space capacity, as well as equipment additions, moves and change.

Benefits-

• Gain operational insight and operate more efficiently.
• Increase uptime and meet and exceed SLAs.
• Track energy usage at colo, so pay for only what you use.
• Securely access to every server’s KVM console through a single URL.
• Leverage outlet-level power switching to “unplug a server virtually.”
• Reduce operational costs by eliminating hour-long trips to data center.
• Gather information on individual devices and aggregated across multiple power supplies.
• Monitor incoming and outgoing air temperatures and humidity in server racks.
• Ensure third-party colo personnel move the server you want them to move

Mr. Gregg Brown, Senior Administrator of Data Center Operation at Choice Hotels reportedly said that, “We want to be able to give our operations staff a complete picture of the data center so they can see every detail at the cabinet level. You click on the DCIM screen, and it’ll go down to the elevation view, and see accurate information about that server, including its location, its operating systems, serial number, and what network port it is using. Now, that we have successfully deployed Raritan’s comprehensive remote access solution to manage our data center virtually, I no longer have to worry about not having my team physically at the site. I can say that here at Choice Hotels the data center operations team is able to sleep very well at night.”

Mr. Sanjay Motwani, Sales Director – India & SEA alleged that, “For organizations running critical applications across multiple locations, Raritan’s DCIM solutions provide operational mangers with all the information they need to efficiently manage their data centers remotely including secure access to every server, temperatures & humidity, energy usage, planning a specific server move etc. DCIM helps organizations save time, costs of travel & delivers higher revenues through reduced downtimes.”