Understanding Power and IT Power Solutions

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] Thanks to power, I'm able to record this video. And thanks to power, you are able to watch this video. So we all use power just about every day to do all kinds of things, including running our IT infrastructure. So what do you say we jump in and we talk a little bit more about power? So power is generated.

0:31So we could have windmill power, so we could have it generated by the air and wind, or we could have hydropower generated by dams where the water flows through and turns the turbines, or we could have coal. Coal is often burned to generate power. But the idea is power is generated in some form or fashion. And then that power is distributed, that's where we see our power lines, we see the lines running throughout the counties, and states, and along the highways, and such.

1:12So it's generated, and then it is distributed, and then we use that power. So oftentimes, we'll see something like this, a good old power meter on the side of a house or a building, or something that's measuring that power, and it's measured in watts. And oftentimes when you see a power bill or something, you'll see KWH, and that's kilowatt-hour. So the number of kilowatt or thousands of watts we've used per hour, and that's because we use a lot of power.

1:42But the base reference of power here is watts, that's very key. So I want you to understand that we're measuring power in watts. And so how do we find out how much power that our IT infrastructure uses? Well, that's a great question. So we're going to start that journey with voltage. Now, voltage is the pressure or difference in potential between two points. So you have point A here and point B over here.

2:14And it's the pressure or the difference in potential. Now, that might sound weird and it probably does, but think of difference in potential as a teeter-totter and gravity comes into play here. But if you had a teeter-totter like this and you had a ball sitting on this side, well, obviously it's going to roll downhill. But if you had a teeter-totter pointed in the other direction, the ball is going to roll downhill again, but in the other direction. That is the difference in potential. It's when we come to understand the idea of energy and that here we may have more or less energy on either side while you have a pressure building there and there's a difference in potential allowing something to flow one direction or the other.

3:00So that is what we're talking about here. Now, voltage does not flow. Something else flows and we're going to talk about that here momentarily. So voltage is the pressure or difference in potential. Voltage does not move, it does not flow. Just understand that. Now, when it comes to voltage, we've got different voltages. We've got 120 volt, 208 volt, there's 240 volt, there's lots of different voltages. Oftentimes, you'll hear 110 volt. I want you to understand throughout this course I'm going to be saying 120 volt because it's 120 volt now.

3:36In the past when the electric company started delivering power it started at a certain power. And then it moved up to 100 volts, and then it moved up to 110 volts, and now it's at 120 volts. But the idea is 110 or 120 are the same thing. So if you're used to saying 110 or you've heard that all the time, just understand it's the same thing as 120 either used interchangeably. Now, of course, these voltages and such apply here in the US. I know overseas voltages are different, they use different numbers.

4:07So just be aware of that. So these are our voltages. And we understand now that voltage is a pressure or difference in potential, it does not flow. So we measure voltage. All right, so that's our voltage, that's our pressure. Think of pressure in a water line. So if I've got a water pipe here, there's water pressure in it, absolutely, that's what forces are causes that water to flow. But what is that water? Well, that's our current, that's what our water is.

4:38And if we had a water pipe, we had water flowing through it, all that, again, is our current and it's measured in amps. And that flow of current is actually the flow of electrons. And those electrons are what provide us the power for our devices to do what they're supposed to do for our servers to run, and our storage to run, or our networks to work like they work. And then it, again, is current.

5:08So far we've talked about watts. And watts was a measure of power. So that's our W for watts. Then we had our voltage. And again, that was the pressure or difference in potential. And we measured that 120 volts or 208 volts. And now we're talking about current which is amps, and that's our electron flow providing our power. All right, so there we go. We've got our watts, our volts, and our amps. And I asked earlier, how do we calculate?

5:40How do we find out how many watts our IT infrastructure is using? Well, that's what we're going to talk about now. We're going to take our watts, volts, and amps, and we're going to do some calculating of our wattage. And it's actually really simple. It's watts equals our volts times amps. It's that simple. So if I have a server and that server we got here, let's draw out our little server here, doo, doo, doo. There we go, our server. And there we go. And it's plugged into the wall, so we have power.

6:14There we go. Draw a little outlet there. There we go. We're plugged in. And now we want to find out how much power we are using from this server by calculating. So what we can do is this is actually a 120-volt outlet, so that's our volts. So we've got 120. And we take a look at our amperage, the amount of current that this server is using, and it's using 3 amps. I should put our volts up there. There we go. So by doing this, we can take and we can multiply these two together and we come out with 360 watts.

6:56So now we know how many watts this server is using. And that's how we calculate our wattage. So what do you say, now that we've got a handle on this, that we jump into a remote management card I've got on my lab server and take a look at some power information? All right, here we are. We are on my Dell iDRAC card. And this is in my lab server once again. So if we scroll down here, I'm on the power and thermal section here, and if I scroll down, I can see here, I have some graphing.

7:33And right now my server is running at 84 watts. All right, that's pretty cool. So I can see the wattage right off the bat there. And I can look it by the last hour here based on wattage. I can see I'm using about 91 watts. Or I could even switch it over to amps and take a look at the amperage usage. So you can look at it either way. So it looks like we're running between half and 0.7 amps. And you can take a look, of course, over the last day, last week, all this great information.

8:05And then if we scroll down a little further, it shows how much the server is using, it's 84 watts. And it actually provides us some BTU information, so we're talking about our thermal units, how much heat this is generating because when we send current through something, it's going to generate heat based on resistance. So that is just something to keep in mind. The more current you push through something, the more heat it's going to generate. And of course, that's why we need ventilation, and we need air conditioning, and we need airflow to help make sure that our equipment stays within a safe operating temperature.

8:41So this is one way you can jump in and take a quick look and see what amount of power that a device is using, specifically a server. But in, I know, a networking equipment, they offer the same information. You can jump in and take a look at that as well, as well as storage devices and such. So here we go. So the purpose of this skill was pretty simple, and it was to, if we switch back over here, was to just introduce us to the idea of watts as power, and voltage, and amps, and what voltage is. Again, remember, that is the pressure and the amps or the current was the flow of electrons.

9:19And these are all part of power and power consumption. So it's a good idea just to get the basic understanding. We're going to use this later on in the course to do some other calculations, but nothing too crazy. So don't get scared about math, it's just simple math. And that is the basics of power. I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] So continuing on the topic of power, what happens when the power is no longer delivering, well, power and no longer works so we don't have any power? Well, of course, the lights go out, our equipment goes dark. So the question is because obviously that's not a good thing, how do we prevent that? Well, that's what we're going to talk about right now.

0:30So we're discussing UPSs or uninterruptible power supplies. And that's what this skill is all about, UPSs. And we're just doing a basic coverage of what an UPS is and why we want to use it. We're going to really deep dive into UPSs later on. So this right here isn't UPS. And an UPS is basically a battery bank. So it is a device that has batteries in it, our good old batteries there, and they provide us with our power when the lights go out.

1:06That's the whole idea behind an UPS. So if we had some servers over here, what we could do is we could plug those servers into our UPS, as well as some networking equipment, we definitely want to plug those in as well, and our storage, if we have storage. But this way, when those power lines are delivering the power, and it comes into the building, and it goes through our meter and into our circuit panels, well, when that power stops being delivered and the lights go out, our UPS kicks on within milliseconds and it provides power to our devices so that they never stop working at that point.

1:47So it happens so fast, that switch of power between the batteries and the power from the building, that our devices don't even notice it. So they don't turn off, they stay on. So that's the role of UPS, to make sure that when our power goes out in the building that our devices don't go dark, they continue to run. And that's the role of an UPS unit. But why use an UPS? Well, obviously we just talked about that. We want to make sure that our equipment continues to run when the power goes out.

2:25So that's obviously a very good reason to use an UPS. But are there any other reasons? Well, yes, absolutely. UPS also provides something, called power conditioning. And that's because the power that we're receiving from the power company is something, called alternating current, or AC power. And well, it alternates just like this, it's a sine wave. So the idea is this power can become what we call dirty power. And dirty power is just that it's not a nice, clean sine wave.

2:58And if we're operating at, let's say 120 volts, then 120 volts should be at the top of the waves, and negative 120 volts should be at the bottom of these waves here. Well, what happens if I get 124 volts or negative 118 volts? Well, that's our dirty power. It's not always going to be 120 volts. And that's what the UPS can help do, they can filter or clean that power coming from the utility providing a nice, clean power to our devices.

3:30So when we have things like brownouts and power sags when the power goes to low, or a spike when the power goes to high, well, our UPSs over here, they filter that out to help protect our equipment from that. So that is another great use for UPS because it helped to extend the life of our equipment. So that answers our question as to what an UPS is and why we would want to use an UPS. But guess what? There is more than one type of UPS unit.

4:01That's right. And that's what we're going to cover in the next Nugget. So I will see you there. I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] So now that we all know what an uninterruptible power supply or UPS is and why we should use one, well, we should just go out to the nearest big-box store and buy one, right? Well, not exactly. That's because there's lots of different kinds of UPS, and there are different features with UPS unit. It's not just a one-size-fits-all as you'll find out. So let's jump in, and let's talk about some different types of UPS systems.

0:34All right, we're going to jump back to power for a minute because there are actually different types of power. Now, I'm not talking about voltages. Remember, voltage was not power. Voltage like we had 120V, 208V, 240V, and so on and so forth, those are-- that's the voltage. But our power was delivered in watts, remember? Yes. Absolutely. Good. So we're not talking about voltages, we're talking about our power and watts. Now, when the electric companies when they generate power, it's actually generated in something called three-phase power.

1:08And that's because if you think about our power as being delivered via current, and that's our amps, so we'll put that as our flow here, our current. And when we had a water pipe, that current was flowing through our pipe, right? It was being delivered. There was the little electrons shooting through those power lines. Well, when power is generated, it's done so in three phases. So you actually have three different pipes. So three feeds. I'm going to put that over here.

1:39Really it is a feed there. Here we go. So you have three different feeds of power. Oh, OK. And that's done because it's the most efficient way. And we're not going to get into all the mathematics and the phases and the sine waves and the science behind all of it because we don't need to for what we are doing here. We're not deep diving. We just want you to understand there's something called three-phase power. So when it's generated, it is three-phase. So when you see those big power lines that we see all over the place, and they have the wires running through them you'll often see like this, just understand there are actually three different phases here, three different feeds of power.

2:18And then those three phases as they're being distributed, when they come to different buildings, you might deliver three feeds of power or three-phase power into this building. But some buildings might only get one-- if I put one over here closer-- only get one feed of that power, and that's known as single-phase. So the takeaway from this slide here is that we have three-phase power. And we also have when you're receiving one feed of power, it's known as single-phase.

2:54So you just get one, a single phase of those three phases. All right, so that's very important to understand because when you're building is delivered this power, and you have to go and figure out what you're dealing with, understand that there is three-phase power and there's single-phase power. Now, let's talk about where these different types of power are used. So when it comes to large power consumption like data centers or industrial complexes, hospitals, hotels, anybody who's going to use a lot of power, well, they're going to receive a three-phase power into the building.

3:32And what that means is if you are being delivered three-phase power into the data center or into your buildings, server room, or internal data center, maybe smaller one, well, you should understand that. Because that means when you go looking for an UPS, that you can actually get a three-phase UPS. And that's because that UPS that you're going to get can plug directly into the three-phase power. And that's a little bit different. So when we look at smaller power consumptions that get a single-phase like smaller offices and such, well, then when you go and you look to purchase an UPS, you're wanting a single-phase UPS. But guess what?

4:17What if you have both options? Well, you can get something called a split-phase UPS. So that UPS unit can actually plug into a three-phase or a single-phase. All right, OK, you're getting it. You're sticking with me here. So then the question is, how do you know what you have? Do you have three-phase? Are you going to plug into three-phase? Or are you using single-phase? Well, it's at that point you need to do some investigation. You need to go talk to building maintenance or an electrician to figure out what you have because you need to answer that question.

4:51Because when you're going to size out a UPS unit or purchase an UPS unit, you need to know if you're going to be dealing with three-phase power or single-phase power. So that wraps up the power portion version of this Nugget. So next we're going to move on and talk about some of the physical aspects of UPS units. Now, some of these physical aspects. So here we have a little server room here. And we could actually have a standalone UPS unit or UPS unit.

5:23So let's say for a computer here, maybe you see this computer right here. Well, if we wanted to power that workstation alone-- let's get rid of that-- we can actually get a little UPS unit that sits on the floor. And the computer will plug into that. So we have a standalone UPS unit. And I've also seen some UPS units that are big as a rack. So maybe over here, you would have a large stack of batteries in your devices over here. Servers and such could plug into this UPS unit.

5:56And it's just a big stack of batteries with a head unit that has some intelligence built into it. So I've seen them like that that are standalone. But you'll also find some that sit inside of a rack. So this is our rack here. And we've got some servers up here or network equipment filling up the rack. Well then, down here at the bottom, we might put an UPS unit into the rack itself. So just understand there are standalone units and there are rackmount units. And they both do the same thing. It just depends on what you want to do.

6:28Do you want to stand alone or do you want something in your rack? And so that's something for you to decide. Now, something else when we consider the physical aspects of an UPS unit are outlets. Because we need these UPS units to feed power to our equipment. So does our equipment plug into something that looks like this, this is your standard 120 volt or does it plug into something like this-- it could be a 208 volt. So it's very important that we understand what our equipment-- this means our servers that we're dealing with, our network equipment, and our storage, and anything we're going to plug-in, we need to understand what it needs to plug into.

7:08So when we go and we purchase an UPS unit that has outlets on it, we need to make sure that it will support our equipment. Because if you go buy something that's all 120 volt and you're running 208V, well, guess what? You're going to have some issues. I'm just telling you things aren't going to match up, and that's a problem. So be aware of that. We're referring to the physical aspects here of the UPS units. This is definitely one that you need to be aware of. So that's something that we're actually going to be discussing more as we go on.

7:41So those are some different physical aspects of UPS units. Hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] In this Nugget, we're going to jump back and talk about voltage a little bit more. And that's because we've discussed some different types of voltages like 120 volts, and 208 volts, and there are different types. But is one better than the other when it comes to our IT infrastructure? And that is what we're going to talk about right now. All right. As a brief revisit to the 110 versus 120-volt, they're used interchangeably.

0:34Again, just want to remind you in case you're familiar with hearing people say 110, it's a 110 outlet, well, generally we're dealing with 120 volts. And again, the equipment that plugs into this it doesn't matter if it's 110 or 120 because it's going to fluctuate in between there because we talked about the AC power, and how it fluctuates, and it's not always going to be 100% dead on, or 110, or 120 volts. So just reminding you that we're using these interchangeably. All right, now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on and talk about the choice, 120-volt or 208-volt.

1:08And I say a choice because when you go, and oftentimes when you're purchasing equipment, servers, and storage, and network devices, sometimes you get a choice between 120-volt and 208-volt. So what should you choose? Well, if your UPS infrastructure, your battery backup, and your power infrastructure only supports 120-volt, then you're going to choose 120-volt. If it only supports 208, well, then you're going to go with 208. But if you're building from scratch, then you get a choice.

1:42For a long time, we only had 120-volt, but then a while back we started to see 208-volt come out in power supply options. So of course, then we need to make a choice. So what choice is the right choice? And that's what this Nugget is all about. OK, so then the question comes out, why was 28-volt brought to market? So let's talk about that, let's talk about our driving force behind 208. And really it comes down to high capacity data centers.

2:14And that was a big driving force behind 208 volts, and that's because with many electronic devices, such as a densely populated data center comes much heat. So again, the more current we're pushing through electronic devices, the more heat is generated. So we say, more current equals more heat. And remember, current was what flows through our electrical lines, those are the electrons flowing through and it's measured in amps.

2:49And as that current flows through those wires and electronic components, the more you're pushing through there, well, the hotter they get. So if we could pull less current or less amps, but still produce the same amount of work, then that would be good because it would generate less heat, and that's exactly what 208-volt does for us. So let's take a look at the math for this. So what we have here is we've got watts divided by voltage equals our amperage.

3:24So how this works out, if we look at 120-volt here, let's do this, and let's say we have 800 watts of power that we're using, and we're running it at 120 volts, well, that equals 6.6 amps. So we have 6.6 amps flowing through our electrical circuit here. All right, very good. But what if we go with 208-volt?

3:55Well, we still have our same 800 watts, but then this goes to 208-volt and this comes out to 3.8 amps. So obviously, we see a pretty good reduction in the amperage or the current that's being pulled through our electronic circuits, meaning it's going to generate, that's right, less heat, which is a good thin. And that's why there was such a driving force behind 208 because of densely populated data centers, we need a way to generate less heat and we can do that by increasing our voltage to 208 volts because that reduced our amp and our current, but allowed the power to do the same amount of work, which was are 800 watts.

4:42So now we see that with 208-volt, we can reduce the amount of heat that our equipment generates. Hey, that is a good thing. Now, if you're a small company and you've got three servers in a server room or server closet, and a couple of switches, well, that's not going to do a whole lot for you. I'm just going to be honest. However, when you're talking about racks of equipment, so maybe you have a server room and you've got four or five racks of equipment in here, yeah, that's going to make a difference because, remember, we have to provide airflow to these and air conditioning to our servers to make sure that they stay in a safe operating temperature.

5:30So this would be very effective in that type of environment. So OK, I see that 208-volt. Well, it does help us to reduce the heat. OK, that's good. But are there any other benefits? And the answer to that is yes. We also gain usually between 2% and 3% efficiency of our electricity by using 208-volt over 120-volt. Now, that's not a lot. If we're talking, let's say, we get 2%, that's not a whole lot.

6:03But I'll take any efficiencies I can get, I'm telling you now, and especially when it comes to paying power bills because if we've got a lot of electricity that we're using because we have a lot of IT infrastructure, well, every little bit helps, let me tell you. Now, we've got that answered. Yes, there are other benefits, that's a big smiley face yes. Is there anything else that I should know about 208-volt versus 120-volt? Well, yes. 208-volt uses different receptacles or outlets.

6:33And some will look something like this, and then they've got a little hole there in the middle, and it's round, and there are other types as well. That's just one example. And obviously, our 120-volt looks something like this, that's our standard wall plug that we see in the US. And this obviously is different. And I can't plug this into that. So if I had a cable from a 208-volt device and I wanted to plug it in to an outlet, obviously, it's only going to fit one of these.

7:07So that means that we need to make sure whatever we're plugging our 208-volt device into that we have a receptacle for it, absolutely. So it means everything from our wall outlets, to power strips, to UPS, battery backups, we've got to make sure that we have the correct type of outlet. So it's very important when we're picking out equipment that we know this. So will you pick 120-volt or 208-volt? And again, that just depends on your setup.

7:38If you're not really worried about heat then, hey, you can do a 120-volt. But with 208-volt you'd get a little bit of efficiency gain. And there's not going to be a big price difference between the two if any, so it's just something to keep in mind. So there is our 120-volt versus 208-volt. I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] So what if you go out and you take a look at an UPS unit, and you're sizing them up, getting an idea of what you're going to purchase, and you realize that this UPS unit only has like 10 or 12 outlets in it? Well, I've got 60 things, 60 devices that I need to plug into this UPS unit. Obviously, the numbers don't match up, do they? Absolutely not. So what are we going to do about this?

0:30Well, I'll tell you exactly what we're going to do. We are going to look at a power distribution unit or PDU. So let's jump in and take a look at these PDUs. So the big question is what is a PDU already? Well, here we go. We talked about this just a minute ago, we said, what if I got too many pieces of equipment to plug into an UPS? Because you're UPS generally might have only 10 or 12 or even less outlets in it. So if you've got some outlets in your UPS, but you've got racks full of equipment, well, something's got to give, right?

1:06Absolutely. So comes the PDU. Now a PDU is basically a big power strip in its simplest form. OK, PDU get much more complicated than that. But you can think of them as a big old power strip. So I could take a PDU, and I could put it right here inside my rack, right there on the side. And then all my servers that have got in here, network equipment, I can plug directly into that.

1:38So I got power now. And then my PDU will come over and plug into my UPS unit. Therefore, all my servers are getting their power from the UPS unit and being protected by the UPS. That's the role of the PDU. Now, I do want to say, generally the way we do this, we'll put two PDUs in each rack. There we go. Put one on one side, one on the other. And a server generally has two power supplies. We like to buy servers with two power supplies so that we have redundancy.

2:10Now, the server only pulls power and runs off of one at a time. You're not doubling the power consumption of your device. It's not the way it works. However, that means we can plug one power supply, we'll say this one right here into PDUA, and then we can take the other power supply here and plug it into PDUB. Now, PDUB is also going to come over here and plug into our UPS unit. This way, we have redundancy. Yes, we have two power supplies in a server, so that's redundant power supplies.

2:44But if I plug both of those power supplies into the same PDU, what if that PDU goes out? Oh, well, then my power supply redundancy isn't really redundant, is it? Not really at that point. So that's why it's a good idea-- I'm actually going to erase that here-- to use two PDUs so that we get additional redundancy. So that's the PDUs. That's what they are. Now that you know that, what do you say we go and take a look at some PDUs.

3:16So let's jump over here to a vendor website. Here we go. We are here on a vendors website that sells a lot of IT power solutions. And here we have a basic PDU, so that's going to be more like a basic power strip. And then they've got a metered PDU. Now, a metered PDU means that there's a meter on it that measures how much current or amperage that is being consumed by the devices plugged into it. So you don't have to guess at that point. It tells you right away.

3:47And why would you want to do that? Well, because oftentimes we like to plug some things into one and some into another to try to balance out our power between the rack. And then we have managed PDUs down here. Now, these actually have network plugs in them. So can plug them into your network, give them an IP address, and you can go and manage them through a web interface. Set up alerts and all kinds of things. So you can see what's going on and set up email alerts if there's a problem. So it's really good to have. So let's go ahead and let's actually let's just click on the managed PDU.

4:20Let's go in here. I want to take a look. So here I'm going to zoom in. There we go. Let's see if we can get this up here so you can see. See there's network ports here, so you can plug it into your network. Here down at the bottom, you see that 4.14 right there? Well, that's the metered part of the PDU. You can see it's pulling 4.14 amps of power there. And you see it looks like a power strip up here, right? Absolutely. It's outlets so that we can plug different things in, and that's kind of what they look like. All right. Pretty simple and straightforward. So what do you say we actually go and let's see-- let's look at some models here.

4:54Let's click on Models. And let's go down here and just pick one of these. Let's see. Right there I'll click on Specifications because I want to look at some very important information that comes to these. Now, of course, you need to know part numbers and such, right? Absolutely. Give you some measurements there. That's not what-- I'm looking for the specs down here. OK, here we go. This is important. All right. So outlet control, yes. But what is outlet control? Well, if it's a managed PDU that you can log into, it's on your network, you can actually remotely turn on and off outlet.

5:28So if you have a server that is stuck in a bootup, you can actually go in and turn the power of and back on to that single outlet. And guess what, remotely balance the power. So that's pretty cool. Chord length-- you got to make sure your chord is long enough to plug in to whatever it's going to plug into. Probably an UPS unit. Phase, a single-phase. Remember, we talked about three-phase and single-phase? This is single-phase input voltage. We talked about 120 volt versus 208 volt, and this here is our 120 volt. And let's see.

5:59Wattage gives you a maximum wattage. Mounting direction, this is important, vertical. The picture I drew-- let me switch back real quick. Let's go here. These are vertically mounted PDUs, but you can also get horizontally mounted PDUs like this with outlets on them. You can do either one just depends on what your needs are. Now, of course, I can have more outlets on a vertical one because it's much longer than a horizontally mounted PDU.

6:32Absolutely. OK, what else? Amperage rating, it's rated at 24 amps. So that's the most power it can allow to pass through. It's 24 amps. It's good to know. Input connection, this is the type of outlet that this PDU will plug into. It needs an L5-30P. What is that? Well, let's pull this up. Let's ask Google L5-30P. There we go.

7:03And let's go to an image-- actually, this is it right there. So if I can go to an image here, we can maybe zoom in and take a look at one of these-- OK, yeah, L5-30P this is what its cable end will have on it, and this is what it will plug into. So you need to make sure whatever you're plugging into has an L5-30R. R is for receiver or receptacle, and P is for plug. So you have a male and a female here ends of the power connection.

7:34So that's good to know. You definitely need to know that because you've got to figure out-- you got to have something to plug it into. All right, super. Number of outlets, here we go. This is super important. This has 24 outlets on it, and they are 5-20R. So if I copy that and I go back up to my Google-- and let's shrink that back down-- and let's Google that, there we go, we can see what kind of outlets. Oh, look, it's your standard 120 volt outlets. So your 120 volt equipment is going to plug into that, super-duper, which we saw this 120 volt up here, that should have given it away.

8:08But we have 24 plugs. That's really good. And if we go down here, number of outlets again, 24 we know that. And also ethernet interface, yes, because it's managed. Also has a serial interface, which is an RS-232 connection. It's just another way to plug-in and manage it. All right, so those are some of the very important things to think about with PDUs. Whether it's going to be vertically mounted or horizontally mounted, what type of input voltages, what about if your single-phase, three-phase?

8:39Also the number of outlets that are in it, and what type of outlets, and what type of receptacle it's going to have to plug into. Got to know these things, otherwise, you'll order this equipment, and it won't match up, and you won't be able to plug things into each other. And we don't want to run into that, and that's what this Nugget is about. This whole skill is about teaching you these different pieces so that when you go and you start ordering things, you know exactly what you're getting into. And that is PDUs or power distribution units. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] All right, we're going to talk about a scenario that you might end up in and a solution for that scenario. And we're going to use something called a stepdown transformer. Might sound fancy, but it's actually pretty simple. So let's jump in and talk about the stepdown transformers. All right, we're going to be going back to our 120V and 208V And this is a situation you might run into.

0:32Let's say, for example, you go ahead and decide that you want to focus on using 208V. So you go ahead and you spec everything out, you've got servers, you've got a rack here. Let's put a rack there. You've got some servers in here, and we'll put S for server. There we go. Got a server over here and one more. There we go. And then you might have some storage right there and networking equipment. All right we've drawn enough. I get carried away.

1:02And everything is running on 208V. We've got our PDUs over here. So we can plug everything in. There we go. And we've got one over here, do it quickly. And so now these all plug-in, boom, to our UPS unit, UPS, and everything is to 208V. Excellent and we're humming along. And we get some equipment in that we need to plug in and use, guess what? It's running 120V. Well, we know that the outlet for 120V, that plug is not going to plug into a 208V outlet.

1:39We just know that's not going to work, they don't match up. So what are we going to do because we still need it to run through our UPS unit, but our UPS is configured for 208V, as is our PDUs, 208V. Where are we going to plug these things in? We can't just plug them into the wall and hope that they don't get shocked or they don't get bad power or something. That's not a good option. So what are we going to do? Well, we are going to use something called a stepdown transformer Hey, all right.

2:09So what this does, it's a device and you put it in your rack in here. There we go. And we'll just put a little steps going down and XFMR. There we go. That's a stepdown transformer there. All right. Now, this will plug in to our 208V outlet in our UPS unit. Super-duper. UPS. And then it will have 120V outlets on it. So we've got our little outlets over here that are 120V, guess what?

2:41That means we can take our 120V device that we have to put into this setup, and we plug it right in there. And that solves our problem. So what this stepdown transformer does is it does a conversion. It uses hardware to convert to 120V for us. And then it provides us a way to plug that in and feed those devices safely. Hey, that's pretty awesome. So what do you say, we jump out and take a look at one of these things, and see what they look like. All right, let's jump over here.

3:11There we go. We are on a manufacture's website. This is their stepdown transformer rack/tower configuration. Can run in a rack or standalone is basically what that means. It's got your input chord here and our output. Now, this output is your standard 120V output. So this is what it looks like from the front. Let's get a look from the back. There we go. And we're going to zoom this in, so hopefully you can see it. There we go. The cable is going to go out and plug in to your 208V UPS unit.

3:42And then here we see standard 120V outlets. That's what this does for us. It allows us to run those 120V devices in a 208V environment. So you can do that. You just need something called a stepdown transformer, unless you purchase a second UPS that's 120V just for your 120V devices, which hey, if you got a lot of them, many people do that. There's nothing wrong with that. But just be aware that you do have options, OK. And that's what stepdown transformers are all about.

4:14I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] All right, it's time to jump back into our UPS discussion. And we're going to talk about batteries because not all batteries are created equally. So what do you say we talk about batteries? All right, so we know that UPS units are battery backups. So inside of our UPS, we have, yep, batteries. And you might have one battery or two batteries, or you may end up with 40 batteries.

0:31I don't know. It depends on how far you want to go with it and what your budget will support. But the question then is, since we know that there's more than one type of battery, specifically lead acid batteries, or traditional batteries, versus the newer lithium batteries, which should we use? Good question. So what do you say we start off with lead acid batteries? And here we have our thumbs up. That is our pros and then thumbs down, of course, cons.

1:02So we've got pros and cons that we're going to be comparing. Pro number one, they're not overly expensive. They're the cheapest of the batteries we can use. OK, that is definitely number one on the list of pros. But guess what, that's all we have for our pro column. What about our cons? Well, lead acid batteries are pretty darn heavy, much heavier than our lithium batteries. OK, but who cares?

1:34It's a battery. Yeah, wait till you go try to move one of them things. I'm telling you, some of the UPS units I've installed easily weigh 120 pounds, some of them 160 pounds because of all the batteries in them. Yeah, you can take the batteries out. But that is a real pain in the rear. And it takes time. So usually, you just grab a second person, and we get that thing muscled into the rack. They are heavy. And not just that, if you've got stacks of batteries-- so let's say you had something like this, and you had a bunch of batteries, what does that battery sit on?

2:05Well, they're sitting on your floor. If you have a raised floor environment, it may be rated for a specific poundage or, hopefully, tonnage when we're talking about batteries, because they can get pretty darn heavy. So it's something you need to think about. Also, maintenance-- lead acid batteries require regular maintenance. So that's something you need to account for. And replacement-- these batteries, lead acid will last usually three to five years.

2:39And I say three to five. You're like, wow, that's a big difference between three years and five years. Yes. And that's because if you have an UPS unit and you've got a lot of power problems and you experience outages all the time, like maybe twice a month or something-- I don't know-- you experience a lot of outages. The outages cause those batteries to drain. And then they have to recharge. So that is actually using the batteries, and it wears them out. So if you've got a lot of power issues, well, then your batteries might only last two years, really.

3:13But if you very, very seldom have an outage, they're probably going to last you for five years. So that's why I say three to five years. But they've got to be replaced. And the other thing is slow recharge time. Slow to recharge. Yes, because when you have an outage and it drains those batteries down, it does take a long time for them to recharge. I mean, I've seen it take eight-plus hours to fully recharge some batteries. So they are slow to recharge. And you might think, well, that's OK.

3:45Well, what if you have an outage and the power's restored, so now you're humming along, right? But your batteries are not fully charged. So you got your batteries over here. You're an hour into when the power was restored. And you're only at 20% or 15% of your battery power. And you experience another outage. Well, you see you have very little time to run on batteries at that point. So the quicker they recharge, the more quickly you're ready to respond to another power outage, especially when it comes to big storms and things when there are actual power problems.

4:21And your power may be fluctuating on and off as a power company works to restore power. That's pretty key. So those are some cons to definitely consider. OK, well, that's our lead acid. Well, what about our lithium batteries? Again, we have our pros over here and our cons over here. Well, pros-- lighter in weight. Yes they are. They're lighter in weight compared to your lead acid. OK, that's a good thing. They also have a longer life span.

4:52And actually, it's like 10 years. And that's because lead acid batteries, when you drain them all the way empty, that's a bad thing. You shouldn't do that. They're not meant to be completely drained. And it shrinks or shortens their lifespan, whereas lithium batteries are designed to be completely drained. They don't care. It doesn't matter. And that's why they have a nice longer lifespan. They're also, believe it or not, more efficient, which is always good.

5:22When we can gain efficiencies, boom, that's awesome. And lastly, fast recharge, because you can completely recharge a lithium battery in two hours. So that is really fast. It's four to five times faster, in general speaking, than lead acid batteries. So that is awesome. What's the con? You guessed it, money. That's right, they do cost more than lead acids. And they used to cost maybe double the price, but not anymore.

5:55This is going to go away. I'm telling you folks, the lithium batteries are coming down in prices every day. So by the time you're out looking for them, they may be absolutely the same price or just a few dollars more. They're not going to be a whole lot more. If you were to pay 10% more for a lithium battery, think of this right here-- lighter in weight, longer lifespan. This is the key to it right here-- longer lifespan, because if you take a lithium battery and you buy a lithium battery, and it's going to last you 10 years.

6:32Super. If I buy a lead acid, let's say it does last for five years. Then I have to replace it with another one in order to reach that same 10 years. That means I've bought two of these in the same time period I bought one of these. So then lithium becomes cheaper in the long run. So that makes a lot of sense. And that's why I say this, nah, not really. All right, there we go. So we can see here that lithium and lead acid batteries are different.

7:04And what's the better choice for you? Honestly, I would go lithium all the way. But if when you go shopping for this, you have a very limited budget, well, then you might have to use lead acid batteries for now. And that's just something to consider, because every environment is different. But if you have the monetary budget for this, then go lithium. I'm telling you, it's the way to go at this point in time because batteries are always being made new.

7:34Like, there's a new one now. I heard of something about a salt battery that's being created to use. So hey, that might be the next big thing. Who knows? But today, I'd go with lithium. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.