Sort of a grab bag of items this week, none of which rise to the level of “gotta have it,” but in aggregate, still interesting. The power vendors are clearly honing their chops to wring out every bit of efficiency and bolster their gear with more impressive power management capabilities.

Tripp Lite hit the wires twice this week with a new rack-mount UPS and a handful of new, monitored power strips. And Emerson is showing off a clever new rear-door heat exchanger that can pull heat off of the racks before it gets into the data center.

A new 2200VA/1920W SmartPro UPS System from Tripp Lite, the SMART2200RM2U, packs a lot of efficient power into a relatively small 2U of rack space and adds enhanced power management as well.

According to the vendor, the SMART2200RM2U’s key features include:

• Eight outlets; three with separate breakers.
• Individually controllable load banks to support remote reboot or automated load shedding.
• Advanced line-interactive automatic voltage regulation (AVR) to handle brownouts and overvoltages without switching to battery power.
• USB and DB9 communication ports, optional SNMP Web card plus PowerAlert software for monitoring, reporting and logging of all site and UPS operational conditions.

Also this week, Tripp Lite added seven new monitored models to its line of network-grade power distribution units. The new PDUs provide an Ethernet interface to enable remote monitoring and condition reports on both power and environmental conditions via SNMP, Web or telnet.

The strips also include an on-board display that shows connected equipment load in amps, a handy feature when it comes time to connect new hardware. The new PDU’s come in five vertical models and two 1U horizontal models.

Tripp Lite officials claim the new power strips can:

• Prevent downtime by enabling automatic load threshold notification
• Monitor and send alerts on ambient temperature, humidity, and up to three dry contacts.
• Provide up to 24 high-quality outlets, depending on model.

Rich Feldhaus, Tripp Lite Product Manager, says the PDUs are about more than offering reliable power distribution. “They offer the ability to monitor power conditions remotely—a critical capability for applications that demand maximum uptime.” He said in a statement. “By warning of potential overloads before critical circuit breakers become overloaded, they help IT managers avoid situations that can lead to costly system downtime.”

And from the “ain’t that clever” department, Emerson Network Power this week introduced the Liebert XDR, a rear-door heat exchanger that removes heat from IT racks before it can warm up the data center.

The Liebert XDR microchannel heat exchanger is mounted in a six-inch deep moveable door fixed to the rear of the rack. It users the servers’ own fans to blow hot air across a special pumped-refrigerant cooling coil. According to Emerson officials, the air blowing out of the Liebert XDRis the same temperature as the air entering the front of the rack, thus neutralizing heat created by the servers.

The Liebert XDR is can cool up to 20 kW of rack load, even without hot aisle/cold aisle configuration. The unit is the globally available version what had been known as Sun Microsystems’ SCD5600 cooling door, an integral part of the Sun Blade 6048 modular system first shown by Sun and Emerson at Supercomputing 2008.

“Because the Liebert XDR cools the air exiting the rack before it enters the room, there is no need for fans to move heat across the room to wall or floor-mounted cooling systems,” said Bob Blough, director of product marketing for Liebert precision cooling at Emerson Network Power. “Eliminating the cooling fans makes it possible for businesses to realize energy savings of 35 to 48 percent compared to perimeter cooling - let alone the capital cost savings from not needing to expand or build a new facility.”