Enhancing the cabinet ecosystem

cabinet. Furthermore, growing data privacy regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), and the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are driving the need for improved cabinet access control.

U.S. Patent No. 9,865,109 covers the integration of the 

functions of a rack power distribution unit (PDU), EAC and environmental monitoring into a single appliance within the cabinet. Through CPI’s intelligent eConnect® PDU, data center managers can integrate environmental sensors and electronic locking capability as a single solution. Users can view and manage power at each outlet and cabinet, monitor status of environmental conditions and control each cabinet access attempt with an audit trail report that is easily exportable via a user-friendly web interface.

Additionally, these three systems can be linked through Secure Array™ IP Consolidation, allowing up to 32 PDUs, 32 EAC kits and 64 environmental probes to be networked under only one IP address—saving data centers thousands of dollars in networking costs. For example, a row of 16 cabinets with two PDUs each would only require two network connections with Secure Array, but would need up to 32 network connections in a standard deployment.

“The integration of EAC into the rack PDU continues our focus on simplification and efficiency for the CPI ecosystem. We wanted to bring a simple, cost-effective cabinet access solution to market without adding complexity to the data center,” says Donald Conner, Electronics & Software Engineer Manager.