When the University of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) needed a way to power the world’s deepest cabled ocean observatory, it knew it needed a little help.
And, when it decided to re-task an old AT&T (News - Alert) voice cable to connect an underwater observatory so that the SOEST people could continuously monitor a spot in the ocean called Station Aloha (22°15’ North, 158° W), SOEST decided to enlist the help of Server Technology (News - Alert).
Server Technology, a company that for over 25 years has provided data center power management solutions, is a leading provider of power distribution products and power monitoring software.
For SOEST, there were a few problems the university was facing including the fact that it was 100 kilometers north of the island of Oahu, and five kilometers deep, which meant that service calls were very difficult to perform. Moreover, even the control systems at the land end of the cable were in a very limited access space that is a cable landing station, according to university officials.
Accordingly, SOEST decided to deploy a Server Technology CW-8H1 IP controllable power distribution unit. With the data center power distribution unit in place, if some of SOEST’s custom software gets into an unknown state and hangs, it does not need to create a special visit request and drive a couple hours, but rather access the Web interface on the PDU and power cycle the computer.
“It sounds simple, but being able to logically tie multiple outlets together, track power usage, and monitor the environment with temp/humidity probes; all translates to uninterrupted data streams to help the scientists of the Aloha Cabled Observatory learn about our changing environment at Station Aloha,” Brian Chee of SOEST said.
For Server Technology, the company was happy to be able to offer some assistance.
Server Technology’s CW-8H1 IP controllable power distribution unit was able to help SOEST tie multiple outlets together, track their power usage, monitor the environment, and remotely manage and reboot the server if needed.
“Server Technology’s Switched 8 units (CW-8H1 IP) were the answer to SOEST’s challenges,” Julie Brown, marketing manager for Server Technology, told TMCnet. “They can remotely manage and reboot the equipment through the cabinet power distribution unit (CDU), get the power and environmental data they need as well as group multiple outlets together.”
Echoed Calvin Nicholson, senior director of Software & Firmware Development for Server Technology, said “It’s great that we could help support the underwater observatory – it’s certainly one of the more unique implementations of our product.”