How NETIO Cloud Smart Power Management Reduces Field Service Costs

NETIO smart power management devices provide a cost-effective way to meter energy usage and provide remote control to individual power outlets and sockets. The new NETIO Cloud provides these features over a secure internet-based connection using an internet browser and will help organisations to improve how they manage remote installations whilst reducing field service engineering costs.

What are Smart Power Management Devices

Smart power management is the ability not only to connect and power IT servers and networking peripherals, audio visual equipment and other devices. Smart power manage is about monitoring and control. Being able to gather data on the electrical characteristics of the loads and control of the electrical sockets they are connected to.

What is NETIO Cloud?

Netio Cloud is one of the environment monitoring software platforms supplied by Server Room Environments and provides a unique way to monitor and control Netio products such as their smart PDUs, intelligent power strips and power cables from a https portal in the Cloud. The portal can be accessed at https://cloud.netio-products.com/ and a demo account can be used to test exactly what is available from the new portal. Please contact us for demo account login credentials.

Essentially NETIO Cloud is a power monitoring and control portal that allows remote monitoring, control, and reboots. From a single webpage on the NETIO Cloud portal (cloud-netio-products.com) multiple electrical power outlets can be controlled in a secure and reliable https environment.

The portal can be used with compatible NETIO smart power management products including their range of Smart PDUs, Smart power strips and Smart power extension cables and sockets.

NETIO Cloud Pricing

New accounts have a 3year free license and the credit for this is activated when your first NETIO device is added to the account. After this the service is priced out on an annual basis. However, the price and usage are not tied down to a specific number of devices (as with some monitoring software portals) and is unlimited.

When the user account credit is zero (0), the service stops but there are several alert warnings to prompt the account holder to renew their credits beforehand.

How Does NETIO Cloud Work?

Each user has a unique cloud-based account and can connect an unlimited number of NETIO smart power devices. Through the portal, users can select a specific device and switch the power ON/OFF or reboot and power-cycle.

Devices cannot be shared between accounts, but a single screen can show all the devices and their outputs when visible. Each device and output can be given a name and defined group and sorted for ease of reference and lookup. For those devices with metered outputs, NETIO Cloud can display real time energy consumption in Kilowatt hours (kWh) and there is a 24hour event log that can be used for client billing.

The webpage can also be displayed on a table tor mobile phone for true monitoring-on-the-go in any environment.

What Are the Benefits of NETIO Cloud?

Instantaneous measurement and control. It is that simply. Being able to remotely monitor and control electrical power connections can save service organisations time and money. Field site visits, simply to reboot a system become unnecessary as the same effect can be achieved with a mouse click or touchscreen over the internet. The software also provides an effective overview of the operational state of the equipment and estate.

Compatible devices include:

• SmartPDUs: PowerPDU 4C and ”PowerPDU 4PS”:/netio-powerpdu-4ps-switched-pdu
• Smart Power Strips: PowerBOX 3PG
• Smart Power Extension Sockets: PowerCable UK Socket and IEC320 socket

Other products will be added to the portal with increased functionality in the future.

NETIO Cloud Technical Specifications

Communication between NETIO Cloud and NETIO smart power devices is via MQTT using TLS security. For a connection to work over a network, it is necessary to establish an MQTT connection (port 8883) and for the installation to use HTTPS connections (port 443).

The NETIO Cloud is hosted on primary and backup servers in a European datacentre.

NETIO Cloud Open API

NETIO products connect to the Cloud portal via a public service internet. NETIO Cloud can also serve as a unified interface for all the smart power devices connected to a single user account via an Open API.
However, NETIO smart power devices do not need to be connected to the Cloud to operate. The devices can be monitored and controlled over an Ethernet/IP LAN connection using one of the Open APIs supported by NETIO devices.

Summary

The new NETIO Cloud services provides an easy way to monitor and control NETIO smart power management devices over the internet. Not only can the software portal provide instantaneous power usage information but also remote power-up and down cycling. These features can assist client billing in colocation environments and reduce the need to send an engineer to site simply to reboot an IT server or other connected device.

Whilst server and IT networking peripheral applications may be our primary concern at Server Room Environments, there are many other applications smart power management that our products can be applied to. These include multi-media & audio-visual equipment and displays, testing laboratories, telecoms & microwave communications systems, and renewal energy plants (solar and wind turbine).