Raritan's Intelligent Power Transfer Switch Targeted At Cloud

Raritan introduced an intelligent rack power transfer switch targeted at cloud infrastructure and racks with one-power-supply devices Monday. Called the PX3TS, it helps equipment operate through power failures. The switch transfers from one power source to another when it senses a power loss and does it faster than current market offerings, according to the vendor.

"Every millisecond counts when there is a power failure," Greg More, senior product marketing manager at Raritan, said. "Our new hybrid rack transfer switch is one of the fastest in the industry -- twice as fast as standard automatic transfer switches, which take from 10 to 16 milliseconds to transfer loads."

The PX3TS, announced at the Cisco live! conference taking place this week in San Francisco, samples the current 4,800 times per second with built-in sensors and transfers the load when it senses a problem in 4 to 8 milliseconds, according to the company. It uses a "hybrid" design, combining electromechanical relay and silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) technologies.

Designed for cloud computing infrastructures and data center racks filled with one-power-supply devices, it adds an additional piece of automation in an increasingly automated data center.

The switch also provides remote monitoring and power distribution unit metering (at PDU level) to help with capacity planning decisions for more efficient use of power resources. It can also act as an extension to Raritan’s data center infrastructure management software, sharing real-time power information gathered by the switch. Raritan's DCIM monitors the health of the rack and the data center.

There are a number of options available as well as a range of voltage and plug types. The PX3TS comes with an intelligent network-ready controller with display, two USB-A ports and one USB-B port to support Wi-Fi networking, webcams and cascading to share IP drops. The switch's sensor ports support optional Raritan plug-and-play environmental sensors for monitoring environmental conditions in the racks.