Provider of data center management solutions Raritan has expanded its Smart Rack product line. The vendor added a new solution for tracking location of IT assets, an appliance for asset and environmental management, as well as three new sensors for air pressure, airflow, humidity and temperature.

The solutions expand Raritan's portfolio of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions, adding to the previously existing dcTrack for DCIM, Power IQ for energy management and intelligent PDUs for power metering at the device level.

Herman Chan, director of Raritan's power management business said today's data centers had evolved into complex ecosystems and required a new level of monitoring capabilities.

"In addition to traditional uptime goals, data center managers now need to efficiently manage IT assets, capacity, changes, events, rack environment, power, energy and carbon," he said. "It all boils down to having the right management and feedback tools to support the care and feeding of IT assets in racks."

Raritan's new system for tracking IT assets consists of tags that attach to individual IT devices and contain ID chips and barcodes that connect to sensor bars that attach along the edge of a rack. The sensor bars feed data about the device and its location into Raritan's dcTrack asset management software, or other vendors' solutions.

When a piece of hardware is moved to a different location, its location is automatically updated in dcTrack.

The new controller for asset and environmental management (EMX Controller) is a 1U appliance that acts as a hub for collecting data from a variety of sensor types, including temperature, humidity, airflow, air pressure, smoke, water, open door and others.

The appliance passes the data it collects to Raritan's Power IQ energy and event management software for tracking and analysis.

Raritan's three new sensors include:

• Differential Air Pressure Sensor ÔÇô measures air pressure differences between two adjacent locations, such as below and above the raised floor
• Airflow Sensor ÔÇô measures airflow from 0-4 meters/second. It can be mounted at perforated tile in front of a cabinet or in an air duct to detect a failed fan or motor
• DPX-T3H1 Sensor ÔÇô one humidity sensor and three temperature sensors on one wire