Rack PDUs

FAQ

rack PDUs questions

Basic, metered or switched — which tier do I actually need?

Basic is enough where the circuit is nowhere near full and nobody has to answer capacity questions. Metered earns its price the moment you need to know how much of a circuit is already spoken for — that is the only way to load one to the 80% continuous limit on purpose instead of guessing. Switched adds remote outlet control on top: power-cycling a hung device without a site visit, bringing a rack up in a defined order after an outage, or locking an unused outlet so nothing gets quietly plugged in. Switched units are generally metered too, so the real question is only whether the control is worth the difference.

How many outlets and what amperage should I buy?

Count what you will actually plug in, add spares for the devices that arrive later, and then check the receptacle types rather than just the total — twenty-four outlets are no use if twenty are C13 and you need six C19. On amperage, a continuous load may not exceed 80% of the nameplate rating, so a 20 A PDU is a 16 A working budget and a 30 A PDU is 24 A. What that means in watts depends on voltage: 24 A is roughly 5 kW at 208 V but only about 2.9 kW at 120 V, and on a three-phase strip the budget is per phase. The rated-amperage control on this page is a floor (30 A means 30 A and above), and it reads only ratings a manufacturer printed in its own title.

0U vertical or 1U horizontal?

Vertical for a rack that is full or heading that way. A 0U strip mounts in the cabinet's side channel, consumes no rack units, carries far more receptacles than a tray, and puts an outlet within reach of whatever needs it. Confirm three things first: that the channel is clear of cable managers and deep chassis, that you have the mounting hardware your cabinet takes (buttons and brackets are frequently manufacturer-specific), and that the strip's length suits the cabinet height. Horizontal 1U and 2U units are the answer when the channel is already occupied, when the cabinet is too shallow for a rear-mounted strip, or when the outlets genuinely need to be at the front.

What is the difference between a 120 V and a 208 V PDU?

How much equipment one circuit carries. Watts are volts times amps, so the same 30 A circuit passes roughly 3.6 kVA at 120 V and about 6.2 kVA at 208 V — which is why dense racks are fed at the high band almost without exception. The trap is that the receptacles look identical: a C13 outlet is rated to 250 V and the cord fits either way, so nothing physical stops a 120 V-only device being plugged into a 208 V strip. Most enterprise power supplies are auto-ranging across 100–240 V and are content with either; older KVM gear, lab equipment and consumer hardware are where this does damage. Read the input range printed on the device before you plug it in.

Are these PDUs TAA compliant?

Every line is screened for TAA country-of-origin and NDAA §889 status before checkout. Country of origin varies by part number and by production run, so state the requirement with your quote request and we confirm it against the exact SKUs being allocated to your order rather than against a catalog record.