Raritan announced a deal with Microsoft's Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC) for a suite of IT management solutions to monitor server energy consumption down to the outlet level.

Located on the main campus in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft's data center contains more than $125 million in hardware and networking equipment. It houses multiple labs for Microsoft's enterprise customers to replicate data center and server configurations for testing software solutions.

The EEC will use Raritan's Dominion KX II KVM-over-IP switches and CommandCenter Secure Gateway - to configure a scaled representation of a customer's infrastructure. In addition, Raritan's new power management solutions will help customers analyze power consumption and cooling requirements for different server configurations. Servers in the labs will be plugged into Raritan's Dominion PX intelligent rack Power Distribution Units (PDU), which measure power consumption at the outlet level.

"With the Dominion PX we'll be monitoring daily the amount of amperage and watts drawn by each piece of equipment in our server racks,"said Microsoft EEC Business Development Manager Steve Cole. "We also will be able to look at cooling and humidity statistics at the racks using the Dominion PX environmental sensors."

Web browser based management will give administrators and customers control to configure servers and other IT equipment.

The KX II provides secure BIOS-level access with Absolute Mouse Synchronization to servers and supports remote installation of software and diagnostics. Raritan's PX PDUs also will help the EEC find free rack space by using real-time power draw information of equipment instead of relying upon nameplate data.

"The remote management capabilities of the PX, as well as the Dominion KX, are key enablers of zero-touch automated machine deployment,"added Cole. "The PX, for example, gives us the ability to remotely power on servers, which is done in sequence to prevent a massive power draw at boot-up. It also helps us in reducing the EEC's energy costs by enabling us to remotely turn off servers that are not in use."