New Industry Products

HP Announces Three-Phase 14.4kVA PDU With Power Monitoring

March 22, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduced the HP 14.4kVA Power Distribution Unit (PDU) with power monitoring to support rack-mount applications with three-phase power. The new 14.4kVA monitored PDU connects to a 50A (40A usable), 3-phase circuit using the popular Hubbell CS8365C connector. The new PDU has a single input and twelve C19 outputs for connecting to a variety of devices such as servers, storage, networking, and other infrastructure equipment. The PDU takes three-phase input power and delivers single-phase power to equipment.

According to HP, as power demands from IT equipment continue to rise, more power is needed in the rack just to run those installed devices. The benefits of distributing three-phase power to individual racks become significant for high-density installations such as blade systems. These benefits include easier load balancing for improved efficiency, cable reduction for simplicity, and larger power rating capability and expandability.

This PDU allows administrators and facility personnel to monitor current draw directly at the rack and at the PDU. A local power display on the PDU delivers the ability to set up and configure the PDU and monitor the PDU power for RMS current, status, and overload conditions. The benefit is that ac power can be evenly distributed across the three phases of ac power to maximize efficiency, minimize infrastructure costs, and reduce the chance of overloading a branch circuit breaker.

The HP PDU with Power Monitoring provides local power display. The PDU chassis includes two serial ports - one for local set-up and configuration and one for attachment of the optional remote management module. The local user interface consists of a basic control panel that includes a two-digit 7-segment display, a recessed reset button, a scroll/invert button and 6 segment-dedicated LEDs. An optional PDU Management Module provides remote monitoring capabilities and can be configured to send e-mail alerts and alert traps to SNMP management programs to monitor up to two PDUs through the network connector or serial connector located on the front of the management module.

The HP PDU with power monitoring is priced at $1499. The optional PDU Management Module is priced at $199.