Data center managers are turning to RFID to address the challenges of increasing inventory accuracy and decreasing inventory time and physical labor.
Data Center Operations and their Challenges
At the end of each fiscal quarter, financial institutions, large scale manufacturers, and content delivery network providers need to account for every server that is currently in service, has been moved, replaced, needs replacement, and at the base level, servers and assets that have entered and exited the server room.
An average data center contains over 10,000 or more data servers. Organized in racks spread among hundreds of rows and containing up to 20 servers per rack, accountability for each server in every rack becomes a challenge to perform accurately and on time. In addition (particularly in the financial sector), companies need to account for and destroy hard disk drives containing confidential information when they reach the end of their lives.
Barcodes vs RFID
Unlike Barcodes, RFID offers instantaneous identification, without requiring a focused line of sight. This reduces the amount of time spent reading each asset and allows the RFID reader to identify more than one asset in a given instance versus “one-at-a-time” with barcodes.
On the other hand, data centers are densely packed with metal server racks and cases, which pose a challenge to the physics of RFID as metal tends to interfere with an RF signal.
The challenge is then to use an RFID tag that is rugged enough to survive the day-in/day-out shuffle of servers throughout their lifecycles, and provide performance that is not hindered by the presence of metal.
Additionally, the physical size and form factor of RFID tags have limited use in applications such as servers and small IT assets due to the limited amount of tag real estate on an already crowded server faceplate and chassis.
Standard and Custom RFID Tagging Solutions
Passive RFID technology has traditionally been challenged when attempting to function in a metal-rich environment or when directly applied to metal. Active and Battery Assisted Passive (BAP) RFID and Passive RFID companies such as Xerafy have been able to provide on-metal, rugged tags that meet the challenges of today’s data centers. The latter is widely considered a more viable choice given the absence of a battery that would otherwise limit its operational lifecycle.
Engineered to meet the standards of data center infrastructure, Xerafy offers the Data Trak II, a versatile on/off metal UHF RFID tag in a 1.5” form-factor that fits nicely on a crowded server faceplate and chassis or can be attached as a hanging tag. The Data Trak II features between 5 and 11 feet (2 and 4 Meters) of reading range on and off metal surfaces.
For blade servers or assets where space to fit tags is limited, the Xerafy Titanium Metal Skin UHF RFID label, at 1.77 x 0.22 x 0.03”, can fit within a 2D barcode label.
In addition, Xerafy offers Custom RFID Tags development services for source-tagging, i.e., embeddable into the IT asset (for instance, a server faceplate) and engineered to overcome the immediate proximity of metal. The latter offers a completely transparent product offering at the OEM level versus external tags for equipment retrofitting.
Data Center Automation With RFID
With the use of Xerafy’s rugged on-metal RFID tags, data center infrastructure can build on :
Real-time asset visibility
Inventory management with increased efficiency and accuracy
Reduced occurrence of un-accounted assets
Stricter adherence to government-mandated asset accountability
Relatively short ROI
Ability to better manage asset service agreements by better asset maintenance tracking
Overall, data centers have seen approximately 15 times increase in inventory productivity and have reduced the inventory labor and time by 90% through RFID automation. This also includes goods ordering and receiving, as well as goods removal and destruction.
Overall inventory time with RFID saves a total of 6 days in total. In addition, when decommissioned, server disk hard drives are assigned an RFID tag for identification throughout the process, providing real-time visibility to ensure drives have gone through all decommissioning processes and do not pose a threat of accidentally leaving the facility causing a security breach. Also, laptop computers, network routers, and other capital equipment utilize Xerafy RFID tags for IT asset inventory and accountability.
Xerafy is a pioneer in Industrial RFID, bringing to market several innovations that enable advanced industrial identification and automation capabilities.
In addition to a complete range of field-proven RFID tags available off-the-shelf, Xerafy offers Custom RFID Tags services, covering everything from a personalization service bureau to custom-design engineering capabilities.
