From major retail cyberattacks to Hollywood studio hackers, cybersecurity is now, more than ever, on the mind of every CIO in the world — and rightfully so. According to our recent article in Data Center Journal, the most common cause of a data breach is malicious or criminal attacks, which could end up costing not only nights of sleep for CIOs, but also millions of dollars; in some cases upwards of $5.4 million.

While these attacks can be devastating, there are some best practices to help avoid cyber-disaster:

1. Don’t give hackers a back door: In order to prevent data breaches, consider isolating your network to avoid allowing easy access to your information. Since access can be logged through network isolation, unwanted activity can be monitored and flagged. To isolate your network and limit threats without compromising necessary access or performance, consider utilizing isolated out-of-band management networks. These networks provide full, real-time access without giving hackers back door entry.

2. Enforce the three A’s: Authentication, authorization and auditing are all critical to securing your network. Ensure your cybersecurity by using fine-grain user authentication through a centralized and controlled process, while still allowing easy access for administrators.

3. Ensure trust and best practices with outside vendors: Servicing data center equipment typically requires allowing atypical access to sensitive information about your data center with people outside your organization. Even new technologies are now requiring software updates while sharing IP addresses and network ports to accommodate those updates. While you may feel confident in your organization’s security practices, it’s also important you trust the security measures practiced by those outside parties or contractors, as well.

Security is a complex, never-ending process, but the right partners can help cut through that complexity and ensure your network—and your business—do not become the next victim.

What other best practices do you use to ensure your network is secure?

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“Environmental protection”, “high efficiency” and “energy savings” are topics of very high concern for both large corporations, as well as for individuals since these aspects are part of everyday life and may generate significant cost savings in both cases.

This is also valid for UPS ranging from large ones protecting substantially vast datacenters, to small ones with just a few kilowatts that safeguard a network or single cabinet in more modest settings.

The ECO mode – also known as energy saving mode or high efficiency mode depending on the UPS manufacturer – is currently highly discussed within the industry. The debate primarily focuses on on-line UPS and on large UPS. Nevertheless, energy savings and efficiency are extremely important aspects also in small and micro power UPS (typically from 500 VA to 10 kVA). The reasons are the same as for large power systems: savings on energy costs and lower environmental footprint.

Choosing a UPS in the most proper way, means considering the criticality of the application that needs to be protected, as well as evaluating the energy used by the UPS to protect the load against disturbances and interruptions.

Here I would like to highlight the “inherent ECO mode” that can be found in line interactive UPS products (VI or Voltage Independent according to EN 62040-3).

In this type of line interactive UPS (VI), the power stream flows from the input through several protection devices (overcurrent, overvoltage, etc.) and mainly through an Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) transformer.

The AVR is in charge of providing output voltage regulation, in order to minimize voltage variations in AC supply and ensure a regulated voltage according to the load tolerances.

Because of the high efficiency of the AVR (typically around 98% or 99%) and of the protection devices through which energy flows, as well as the lower quantity of electronic components used in this type of UPS topology, a high performance line interactive UPS can provide an efficiency level higher than 96% at full load. A perfect example of this is Liebert PSI UPS, which makes use of line interactive technology and therefore of AVR, and which can reach the efficiency levels mentioned above. As said, this operation mode is inherent to line interactive UPS topology, and its high efficiency is also ensured in wide load operating conditions and AC mains variation. While ECO mode in on-line UPS is operating in a smaller input voltage range, line interactive topology is able to operate in high efficiency mode during most input voltage changes while still being capable to provide some output regulation.

When comparing a line interactive UPS with a double conversion online UPS there are many aspects to be taken into consideration such as stepwise or pure sine wave inverter, transfer time, size, etc. However one of the main differences is exactly that line interactive UPS feature “inherent high efficiency” because of the VI technology and the use of AVR as mentioned earlier.

The energy savings associated to it are highly appreciated even if we are talking about single phase UPS meaning UPS which range from 0 to 10 kVA, because:

1. Daily saving  just  a  few  watts  in  continuous UPS operation 365 days a year amounts to a significant total yearly saving

2. In applications such as campuses or big corporations where many of these small UPS devices are used contemporarily, the few watts saved daily per each device increase even more the daily and yearly total saving and reduce the total campus or corporation expenditure.

To provide an example, assume a load of 2.5 kW being protected by a UPS. Such load may correspond to a cabinet with several servers for enterprise applications or to a wiring closet distribution panel. Such UPS can work in line interactive mode (assuming 97% efficiency) or operate in double conversion mode with 90% efficiency, using a rough estimation. The difference in power losses and thus energy savings, will be around 200 W. Assuming an electricity cost of 0.138 €/KWh and doing a quick calculation on yearly savings, you can get a value of around 272 € saved per year. This amount can be multiplied for five years and the total saving will reach nearly 1,500 €.

So it will be clear by now that additional to traditional ECO mode (typically used in double conversion online UPS in general and large UPS in particular) there is an inherent ECO mode used in single phase UPS, specifically line interactive ones.

This grants significant savings to customers as the line interactive technology is inherently highly efficient and as the UPS making use of it are typically used daily all year long so in the long term even little daily saving amounts to a considerable total figure.

And what about ECO modes in on-line UPS in this small UPS range? Is there any difference or advantage? There is an interesting story too.

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The last two weeks have likely been a challenging time for a server room manager to sleep at night.  With one snow storm, and one ice storm reliable power is the hot topic!

As power is slowly restored to the affected areas, it is interesting to see many empty parking lots along the Route 202 corridor.  Likely some of these businesses are having second thoughts about their IT preparedness strategy.  Losing power for a few hours is one thing, but being without power for days is a whole different challenge.

If you have a generator it probably took the load before your UPS batteries went dead.  For managers relying on rack-mounted UPS systems to carry them through probably experienced a few unwelcome surprises – shorter battery run-times than expected and unplanned server shutdowns, i.e. crashes.  Depending on the type of UPS technology you have, your lack of run-time may have you looking for better technology.  What type you have now doesn’t really matter because going forward, you want to only buy On-Line Double Conversion units, not Line Interactive.

UPS units – even rack-mounted ones – are designed to protect against fluctuations in the utility power quality as well as provide battery backup in the event of an outright failure.  Line interactive UPS units are very commonly used.  The problem is that they rely on the battery for more than just utility power loss.  Frequency or voltage variations trigger the load to shift to the battery, and even though it may only be energized for a short period of time these frequent ‘hits’ curtail their life.  Double-conversion UPS units, as the name implies converts the utility AC power feed to DC, and then regenerates a clean AC feed to the connected load (where it is them internally converted back to DC!).  The only time the battery pack is energized is if there is an outright power failure.  The benefit is longer battery runtimes. More Information Click Here.

UPS batteries however have a finite life.  Just like your flashlight or car battery, they degrade with time and load.  With all the tasks IT Managers have, maintain an updated UPS battery replacement schedule likely isn’t high on the list.  After experiences like this week – maybe it gets moved up but that is hindsight. 

After utility power is restored the next issue to deal with is replacing the batteries.  Replacing them will of course mean another shutdown. Here is an idea – invest in a Liebert MicroPod which allows you to externally bypass the UPS and not have to shutdown anything.  Here is a link to this remarkably inexpensive, highly useful UPS add on.

All this UPS discussion is good for minutes – maybe an hour of battery backup.  After this storm you may be more interested in hours rather than minutes.   For critical devices– like network switches now is the time to consider a DC UPS power solution.  Before telephony went IP, DC power was the de-facto power standard in the industry.  The small windowless telephone buildings you see were built to provide local switching for a DC-powered network.  It is tried and true technology that did not migrate quickly to the server room.  Now however nearly all manufacturers offer DC-powered equivalent products – particularly the switch manufacturers like Cisco.

The biggest advantage for making your network switch DC powered is you can economically power it for HOURS without spending a fortune on batteries or real estate.  IT Managers with disaster experience will deploy this technology if they do not have a backup generator.  The DC option is often overlooked by network designers when selecting a power system.

The Emerson Netsure family of products offers a rack-mounted solution that has the same form factor as an AC-powered UPS. The DC systems offer the significant advantages of scalability and redundancy.  And a string of DC batteries at -48Vdc, is on tenth the number of jars used for an AC UPS with a 480Vdc battery system!  This means that you can get a lot of bang for your buck, meaning longer run times of 4 to 8 to 12 hours (depending on your load) without buying a lot of batteries.  And the rectifiers that convert the AC source to DC, are modular and hot swappable.  That means that you can have enough power to support your load, plus one rectifier for redundancy, and open slots in the chassis to add more rectifiers in the event that your load grows over time.

The DC Plant, distribution breakers, and the batteries can all fit into one rack!

And if some of your loads are AC only, a rack mounted inverter can be used to power those loads off of the DC plant (using the same extended battery backup).

DVL offers a complete line of Emerson Netsure DC systems ranging from 8 watts to 200 watts per rectifier and systems that range from 10 amps to 10,000 amps.  If you’re interested in learning more please download this Emerson Network Power whitepaper “DC Power Systems for Convergent Networks”