Raritan 'lights up' Choice hotels!

Raritan's DCIM and power management solutions have successfully managed to reduce light-outs at Choice Hotels. With the solution, the hotel now has uninterrupted access and control on each and every aspects of the infrastructure without being on-site24 x 7.

Raritan's secure gateway has further simplified the operations by providing a single pane-of-glass console access versus every KVM switch's IP address and servers behind it. Choice Hotels now can see every server and its functioning with just one IP address.

The Choice Hotels, the largest lodging companies in the world has its global reservation system that handles all hotel transactions. Any updates or changes made in the status of reservations, cancellations, etc. of rooms by the guest in any of the 500,000 guest rooms across the eleven franchises of Choice Hotels used to go through Choice's data center. Any disruption in service could result in lost revenue and would also lead to the dissatisfaction of the customers.

The challenge was to make the move and operate the new "lights-out" data center which was located more than an hour away from the IT team. The next challenge was to keep a tab on assets and whether third-party collocations personnel move correct server/equipment. And the final challenge was to track energy usage and environmental conditions in remote cabinets.

Gregg Brown, senior administrator, Data Center Operation, Choice Hotels said, "We want to be able to give our operations staff a complete picture of the data center so they can see every detail at the cabinet level. You click on the DCIM screen, and it'll go down to the elevation view, and see accurate information about that server, including its location, its operating systems, serial number, and what network port it is using. Now, that we have successfully deployed Raritan's comprehensive remote access solution to manage our data center virtually, I no longer have to worry about not having my team physically at the site. I can say that here at Choice Hotels the data center operations team is able to sleep very well at night."

As a part of the solution evaluation process, Choice Hotels visited a number of colocation facilities to learn how other companies managed their remote data centers and learnt that Raritan solutions was on top in terms of remote management capabilities in power, KVMand DCIM. Hence Choice Hotels selected Raritan solutions.

The iPDUs served as an intelligent platform for environmental monitoring. Choice Hotels also purchased Raritan's humidity/temperature sensors that plug into the iPDU sensor port. For additional insights, information gathered by the iPDUs and sensors were analyzed and monitored by Raritan's Power IQ energy management software. This software tracks power consumption trends for each of Choice's servers, including those with dual- and quad-power supplies. The analytics component will show which devices may be operating inefficiently based on energy consumption trends, whether power conservation efforts are working, and if there are hot spots or over-cooled areas. The information serves as an early indicator of trouble.

Sanjay Motwani, sales director, India & SEA said, "For organizations running critical applications across multiple locations, Raritan's DCIM solutions provide operational mangers with all the information they need to efficiently manage their data centers remotely including secure access to every server, temperatures & humidity, energy usage, planning a specific server move etc. DCIM helps organizations save time, costs of travel & delivers higher revenues through reduced downtimes."

To access servers, including VMware servers, from anywhere, Choice Hotels added digital KVM switches to its new colo data center. It also implemented Raritan's Command Center SecureGateway to simplify access to equipment connected to all the KVMs. Raritan's in-the-rack electronic asset management solutions ensures that third-party colo personnel work on the correct equipment. The asset management strip's LED lights blink to identify the correct server to work on. In addition, each server has an asset tag that sends a signal when a server is installed or disconnected. It also helps Choice Hotels keep accurate, real-time inventory of servers and other IT assets. To further help workers in identifying equipment in the data center, Choice Hotels decided to use Raritan's color iPDUs and cables in red and blue. The colors help distinguish between A feeds and B feeds for powering servers and other devices with multiple power supplies. Color also makes it easier to identify and locate rack PDUs, and all power chain components, at a distance, from any angle and in all lighting situations.

The DCIM solution replaced the spreadsheets which were earlier used by Choice Hotels to track assets, and will provide new capabilities such as managing power and space capacity, as well as equipment additions, moves and change.