Abstract
Up-to-date records of last mile power connection information in a datacenter are useful, e.g., to enable data center engineers to reason about the power-network dependency of machines; to monitor aggregate power consumed by a group of machines; etc. Such records are typically obtained manually, e.g., by associating barcodes with both distribution equipment (junction boxes) and power loads (racks) and scanning the barcodes to establish distribution-to-load mapping. The present manual methods of power-connection discovery are labor-intensive.
This disclosure describes automated discovery of last-mile power connection information in a datacenter. Power cables (whips) that connect racks to junction boxes are made available in several colors and possibly barcoded. Each whip has length less than a certain maximum. A robot moves down the aisles of a datacenter capturing images of racks, whips, junction boxes, and their barcodes. An image-processing engine maps a rack to a junction box by identifying a whip of common color (or barcode) attached to both rack and junction box. The limited length of the whip is used to disambiguate distribution-to-load connections.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
N/A, "Automating last-mile power connection discovery in datacenters", Technical Disclosure Commons, (December 17, 2018)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/1780