Racks And Enclosures: Emerging Business Opportunity

Imagine a scenario in which your client is setting up a new data center and
has assigned you the task of meeting his requirements at a reasonable price.
Howerver, he does not want to compromise on the efficiency of the hardware
installed in the data center. While he is concerned about the servers and the
entire net­working infrastructure and the cooling system that has to be put in
place, there is a chance that he will overlook important aspect while designing
his data center, ie investment to be made while buying a rack or enclosure.

There was a time when racks and enclosures were considered only for keeping
the servers and related equipments safe. Thus customers never spared a thought
when it came to buying a rack or enclosure.

However, with the IT industry undergoing a massive change, both in terms of
technology and efficiency, racks and enclosures have undergone a sea change in
terms of the form factor and technology on the whole.

Think before you buy

Initially, a server rack was no different from an iron rack of certain
height and width. But now these racks have proper built-in cooling systems.
Besides, the racks have become lighter in weight as iron is being replaced by
aluminum. There have been many additions in the feature. Racks are now available
with a rack fan that helps in cooling the servers. Another feature that has
lately been added is that of liquid cooling system that not only make these
racks more efficient but at the same time provides a lot of cost benefits to its
consumers.

Hence, if customers start utilizing racks that are especially designed and
configured keeping in mind their individual requirements, they can save as much
as 40 percent on this electricity bills. This is something that increasingly
more and more customers are eyeing in the face of competition and economic
slowdown. Again, given the fact that the lifecycle of a server is no more than
three years, it is advisable to have racks and enclosures that provide greater
RoI deployed within your data center.

Rittal is one of the companies that have been pioneering the technology of
rack designing for quite sometime now.

Pointing towards the design of the hardware, Aiyappa, Marketing Engineer,
Rittal India mentioned, “While placing the rack, special care has to be given to
the fact that it adjust to the environment within the data center and does not
get damaged owing to the cold conditions inside. Since the server in itself
produces a lot of heat one needs to bear in mind that the metal with which the
rack has been made should not change its property.”

He further added that all the servers placed within the racks should get
proportionate cooling. Hence, while designing the cooling system within a rack
special need to be paid.

Rittal also provides CMCPC solution which is a patent technology of the
company. Using the CMCPC solution, the company configures the entire system for
their clients. It also offers remote services in the form of controlling
humidity, temperature and power required by the servers. This is done by
providing temperature, humidity and power sensors within the racks and
enclosures at the time of designing the same. Besides, this solution also offers
an in-built security system that is provided by installing a software within the
rack.

“Security has become the topmost priority of companies and increasingly more
custo­mers are aiming at securing valuable data in their servers. Providing the
CMCPC solution to our customers has given us the perfect platform to promote the
racks and servers business,” opined Aiyappa.

The company has supplied many such racks to Reliance Industries. Reliance has
a huge data center with all its valuable data in these servers. Rittal provided
the company with the CMCPC solution alongside the hardware (special racks and
enclosures).

Another factor Rittal has thoughtis of the disaster can strike anytime.
Keeping the same in mind, Rittal also provides infrastructure along with the
solution, wherein they provide the client with fire proof rooms in the form of a
data center.

Rittal has offered the same solution to the Indian Airforce wherein the
company not only built a fire proof room for the Indian Airforce but also went
ahead and deployed fire proof enclosures within its data center.

Current trends

A look at the trends suggest that the Indian customers have never paid much
attention to the quality and utility factor of a rack. At the time of buying
they merely buy racks and enclosures because they want to place their servers
within the data center. However, with the advancement in technology, customers
have started paying attention to several aspects including quality of the sheet
used to manufacture the rack, the cooling system and the form factor.

In the earlier days, the server racks used to be heavy and rack manufacturers
used to provide solid metal stuff to make the same. The heavier the metal, the
more useful it was considered. But with the passage of time, the racks have
become lighter. This aside, another factor that is kept in mind while designing
a rack is its depth in it, since a normal server takes a lot of space within the
rack. Besides, racks are now available with side panel doors.

Yet another company, Emerson, began paying heed to the design of the racks
when they acquired German-based company-Knurr around one and a half years back.
Knurr had over 400 patents and specialized in rack designing technology. Emerson
now designs special racks depending on the customer's requirement and the
vertical they are catering to.

In addition to this, Emerson offers the Cool Thumb rack to the telecom and
manufacturing sector as it is best suited for higher density racks. Cool Thumb
rack cools on its own wherein the AC unit for the rack is deployed elsewhere and
chilled water is used to provide cooling and refrigeration.

The concept of installing green racks have also gained prominence given the
current environmental conditions and increasing concerns around carbon emmission.

These green racks are available with perforations as the servers placed
within them require good air conditioning and air flow. (Normally there should
be 83 percent perforations) within the racks to provide the right amount of
cooling to the server). Within a data center there may be more than 20 servers
placed at a time and hence higher the perforations, better it is for cooling.

Opportunities for partners

There are a whole lot of opportunities that the partners who are into
selling racks or solution providers who provide a gamut of services around
networking and infrastructure can consider, if they are looking at the racks and
enclosure business.

According to Aiyappa of Rittal, the partners can take this up as a consulting
business and provide their customers not only with the requisite hardware in the
form of racks and enclosure but an end to end solution as well.

Throwing light on the opportunities, Ankesh Kumar of Emerson Networks
opined,“Customers today are demanding racks that have more depth in it so that
they occupy less space within their data centers and at the same time help in
reducing cost. With the invasion of blade servers, vendors who have been into
designing and manufacturing of server racks and enclosures have also made
necessary changes to the form factor of the rack. Thus cooling, cabling, depth
and material used to design the racks are a few details that rack vendors need
to pay heed to.”

He further added that the rack and enclosures is one business that will grow
as and when customers are made aware of the advantages and benefits of using the
same. Hence the opportunities clearly lie for those partners who are either
concentrating solely on this business or providing the same to their customers
as a value added service.

There are many small time establishments and cyber cafés wherein people use
server and can be tapped as potential customers for the same. However, broadly
there are three different segments that have specific demand when it comes to
investing in racks. Firstly, special racks can be designed for the various
industrial applications wherein not much of IT equipments are required.

On the other hand, telecom industry is yet another potential segment that
looks for an enclosure for DC power and switches and hence demands specific
racks for the same. For example Shelta is a type of closet deployed by many
telecom companies and is used to cool its switching devices.

Finally there are a number of IT companies that have basically two types of
requirements that revolves around networking and server racks.

Pooja Sharma

(poojas@cybermedia.co.in)