When it comes to the power levels being used in even a smaller server rack, you can’t just use a cheap power strip without the strip melting down is a concern, a proper PDU or power distribution unit is needed. For some, this might just be a simple unit that is basically just a rack-mounted power strip designed for the higher wattage, or maybe you need one with switches for each plug. Being able to keep an eye on power usage, remotely reboot, and to set your devices to reboot automatically if they stop pinging is what you can expect on the higher-end managed PDUs and that is exactly what Trendnet offers with their TPI-06 6-Outlet Managed PDU. Today I’m going to check the TPI-06 and see what it is all about and see how it performs by checking out the software side of things and see how it compares to the EnGenius ECP106 I took a look at last year.
Product Name: Trendnet TPI-06 6-Outlet Managed PDU
Review Sample Provided by: Trendnet
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
Photos and Features
The box for the TPI-06 will look very familiar if you have had your hands on any other Trendnet hardware. A lot of the switches I have used in the past have this same styling. The box has black at the top and bottom with a gradient fade from black, through blue, then to white in a stripe down the center. That makes it easy for the Trendnet branding in the top corner in white to stand out as well as the model name and the highlighted features along the bottom. But then in the center, the black switch is visible on the blue and white center section. The TPI-06 model number is small but up in the top right corner. The front of the box also highlights that it supports Hive, Trendnet’s cloud functionality. The back of the box doesn’t have the fade at all. On the right, there is a black stripe that lists out features in Spanish and French. Most of the back however has a white background and includes a rendering of an office and shows some of the potential items from Trendnet that you could use. There are four pictures of the TPI-06 that help touch on features. They list out all of the ports, show that this is a managed PDU and that it is fanless with each having a small description for more information.
Inside when you open the box up, the comes wrapped up in a plastic bag and has foam protection on both ends that holds up away from any of the sides of the box. This is similar to how any rack-mounted switch comes in as well. There is a quick installation guide tucked in there and then at the back the foam also holds a cardboard box with all of the accessories. Inside you get the power cord which is a NEMA 5-15P to a C13, aka a standard US power plug to a normal PC power connection. There are two rack mounts each along with a bag of screws for installing them. There is a bag with rubber feet for situations where you aren’t rack mounting the TPI-06 and a metal clip. I will talk more about the clip but it is there to help hold the power cord.
The TPI-06 6-Outlet Managed Rackmount PDU is rack mountable and with that, its size and shape aren’t much of a surprise. It is designed to fit in a 1u standard 19-inch wide rack space and it comes in at 17.32 inches wide so that with the mounting ears it can reach that 19-inch width. It is 1.73 inches or 44mm thick and it is 6.69 inches or 170 inches deep.
Like a network switch, it has a steel housing with a textured black finish. Up on top Trendnet did slip in a large logo across it. For the bottom, there is a little more going on. In the center, you have an information sticker. That has the manufacturing information, all of the certification logos, and the model name. Also on the sticker is the MAC address and its serial number. On the bottom, you can spot a few of the standoffs that are flush mounted here for components inside. There are also four raised circles, these are for the included rubber feet. If you aren’t using this in a rack you can toss those on so it isn’t sliding around on a table scratching things up.
Both ends of the TPI-06 have the same thing going on. There are three different sets of four screw holes. These are for the rack mounting ears. Having three locations gives a little flexibility in how you mount everything. For a switch that wouldn’t matter but here for a PDU, it will depend on your layout where you even want the TPI-06. You might want to attach it to the back of your rack or mount it facing backward. You can also flip the mounting ears and hang it from a wall as well if you don’t have a rack but have a few devices mounted to a board for example. The only thing missing however is because we only have one set of mounting ears, you can’t recess the TPI-06 back which is something some PDUs will do and can be especially useful if you need to use a plug facing out the front but have a rack with a door on it.
The front of the TPI-06 has the Trendnet branding and the model name on the right. Next to that is the PDUs network connection which while it isn’t needed, is a full gig connection. Next to that, there are two buttons, one is the power button. That has a backlit power indicator in the center and is recessed slightly so it can’t be bumped. The reset button next to it is a pinhole button, you will need something to push it. From there are 10 different status LEDs. The four closest to the power button are the Power, System, Protected, and Grounded status lights. The power shows if the power is on or off or blinks when the firmware is being updated. The system LED can be green or red and lets you know if the system is booting up, is ready, or if there is an error with an outlet. The Ground light lets you know that the power plug is grounded. Then the protected status can be green or red and lets you know if the MOV (metal oxide varistor) is active (green), not active (red), or if they have removed power from the outlet (off). To the left are six more status LEDs and these are all numbered and correspond with the outlets on the back of the PDU. They just let you know if each plug is on or off. On the far left the front of the TPI-06 has just one power plug and this is the dedicated always-on power plug.
The back of the TPI-06 has six different NEMA 5-15R outlets across most of the back starting over on the left. They all have labels below with the port number. Each plug also has a status LED right next to it as well, in addition to the status lights on the front. This is a nice feature given that you might be behind the rack working on things trying to figure out why something isn’t on. Over on the right side, there is a circuit breaker for the whole system then the C14 plug for the included power cable. Above that plug, there are two small hangers for the small wire cable support that was in the accessory box.
I was curious how the TPI-06 works and pulled the top cover off to check it out. Trendnet has it split up into three circuit boards. The long board at the top has all of the power relays that control the six outlets on the back. It’s a simple design with the power being fed in from the circuit breaker. Each outlet has one small black cable running to it. The green ground cable and the white neutral cable run from outlet to outlet. There is a small cable running from the bottom right circuit board that handles controlling all of the relays. The bottom right circuit board is the controller, this is where the LAN connection, power buttons, and status LEDs are all here as well. The bottom left PCB is where all of the AC power filtration is handled. All of the cables are 14 gauge which is perfect for the 15 amp capacity of the TPI-06. Also to note, while there is a lot of open air, there aren’t any fans or heatsinks needed to keep things cool.
Software and Performance
As far as functionality goes, the TPI-06 is a simple device and works like most other managed PDUs. Once you have things set up, the TPI-06 helps you monitor wattages for everything that is hooked up and protects from voltage spikes. The only functionality that I found myself missing physically was individual power buttons for each of the plugs. You have just one power button to power all 6 ports up or down. Having a little more control there would be huge. As it sits, you have to log in and turn a port off unless you are okay with powering everything down and that is extra work if you are there in person.
That said, most of the functionality is on the software side of things. The TPI-06 offers a lot more through its web interface than you might think from looking at it. So let’s run through the whole experience there, that is where you are going to use the TPI-06 the most. For starters, when you first hook the TPI-06 up, it will default to a static IP. I would prefer to see it default to DHCP, that way you don’t risk having an IP conflict when you first hook it up. Once logged in and you get your password you have a small PDU setup wizard that walks you through the main configuration. You get asked if you are going to use Trendnet’s Hive cloud control or the default web interface. All of the pictures here are with the web interface. I did try out Hive but the TPI-06 wouldn’t connect, even with the latest firmware. I kept getting domain name resolution fail, get server IP fail errors. On top of that, while Hive is interesting I was surprised to find that by default you need to pay $9.99 yearly for your device license. Paying for a cloud service isn’t anything new, EnGenius has a Pro license as well but you can at least use most of the features without it. In this case, you get a year of Hive free for your device when you buy it and have to pay after then on top of that they have the Pro Add-On. Back on the Wizard, it has you fill in the date and time but there isn’t an option to set your timezone and let it update. After that, you are good to go.
Once set up and anytime you log in you will start on the dashboard. This page has two tabs up top, the dashboard and switch view. This is where you will find all of the information on your setup. On the first page, you have tables that show your uptime, current voltages, and temperature, and then all of your network configuration. Down at the bottom, they have graphs showing your power consumption. I would prefer that to be right up top and easiest to see. On the left you see the wattage used and available, there is a graph with the total wattage, and then a per-plug breakdown of the wattage being used. I only had one plug running for this picture, but you can see that one system is pulling 127.4 watts at the time. The switch view tab then has a picture of the back of the TP1-06 with each outlet. Then below that you can see the wattage, voltage, and current for each outlet and have switches to turn them on and off and a reboot button. There is also a power cycle button on the far right for all 6 outlets. This should also be on that main page, I would prefer to have this and the graphs right in front of me when I log in and have to go a tab over to see things like all of the PDUs network details.
On the left side you can open up or hide the menu and there are three main sections. You have Outlet, System, and Log. The first section is where you will find all of the PDU-specific settings. They have it split up into three pages, the settings page, the schedule page, and auto reboot. On the settings page, you start with the power delay settings for each outlet. When power turns on it’s a lot easier on things to not have every single device power up at the same time and this is how you can avoid that. It can also be important when some devices get a little weird if another device isn’t powered up first. On our network for example our TrueNAS server has issues when it comes on before the network is up and running. Here you can name each outlet and then set the delay for each. The same goes for how long of a delay is needed when powering it all down. If you don’t want a delay there is a switch up top to turn it all off. On that same page down at the bottom you can set voltage range settings, this lets you set a minimal and max voltage range, and if you aren’t in that it will turn things off to try to prevent damage to your devices.
Continuing with the Outlet menu the next page is the Schedule page. Here you can set up multiple schedule actions. There are a few on here by default to show you what can be done. This is basically like a smart outlet where you can turn a plug on or off or reset it at a specific time and set what days of the week you want to do that. This is great if you have a device that gets a little weird over time and doesn’t have auto reboot in its software or using the example that Trendnet gives you might want a light or something else to turn on for a specific window. I would prefer to go about it other ways, but you could have your PoE-powered wireless network shut down when the business isn’t open. For me, I am most likely to have this rebooting a modem outside of busy hours though.
The last Outlets page is the Auto Reboot page and this is where things can get useful. By default, there are two Google host checks on here but you can set up other websites or IP addresses and have it pinging out. Below that you can set the ping interval and the number of failed pings to see before anything happens. I’ve used this functionality on my own network to fix an issue that seems to pop up when we go on vacation. I can go all year without needing to reboot my modem or a router and once I’m 2000 miles from home the power will go out or something will happen and it all gets hung up. Then we have to ask someone to go and restart them so we can access files, our cameras, and our Plex remotely. With this, you can ping out and if the internet goes down you can set it to auto reboot. You can even get fancy and ping a device on your network and when it fails reboot that device to automatically fix a lockup. Each outlet has reboot settings so it can reboot multiple times if needed and most importantly you can pick which hosts that are getting pinged apply here. You can set up multiple and require all of them to fail, this is a good way to avoid having a Google outage and suddenly your network is going crazy. Be careful how you set this up though. With my initial configuration, I had it reboot my modem, gateway, and all of my switches. I learned though that maybe your internet goes down and now your entire network is down where before you could at least access things on the network.
The next section is the Settings menu. This is broken down into four pages. The first is the Cloud settings page. This is a simple one you have the option up top to switch between using cloud mode or not. When you are using the cloud, the rest of the web interface goes away. You have your Hive login information and then on the right you have the status of everything. The next page is the network settings page and here you can switch between static and DHCP. With the static page, you set up your IP address, Gateway, DNS, and Subnet mask and you are off to the races. The DHCP page just greys all of those out and lets DHCP do the work. The System setting page has your web interface username and password settings, your time zone setting, device name, and if you want information in Fahrenheit or Celsius. You can also change the Https port here as well. Last up for the System settings pages you have the firmware page. Here you can see the model name and current firmware. You can upload a new firmware downloaded from the Trendnet website. You can also back up or restore your configuration and this is where you can reboot the entire TPI-06 or do a factory reset.
The last section is the Log section and this has two pages. The first page starts off with remote Syclog settings. You can turn that on and input your server IP and port. Below that you then have the logs which you have options to flip through the pages and you can download the full log. The second page has your email settings including setting up an email server in the top half and down at the bottom you have three options for email notifications. You can get emails when there is a safe voltage event, overload breaker event, and host timeout event. Those are the three safeties that the TPI-06 offers. Depending on how you are using it, you might not need some of those. You might already get notifications when the internet or a server goes down or if you have a UPS you might get voltage information but the overload breaker event one should be on your radar if you are planning on running any big-wattage devices.
Overall and Final Verdict
The PDU you need is going to depend a lot on how you plan on using one. For some people a simple power strip like PDU is all that you will need for distributing power in your rack or maybe if you will always be nearby a PDU with manual switches works. If you are checking out the TPI-06 6-Outlet Managed PDU however, there is a good chance that neither of those fit for you. In that case, being able to remotely manage everything is important, or at least some of the features that come alongside that. This isn’t the first PDU that I’ve had in the office, I took a look at the EnGenius ECP106 Switchable Smart PDU last spring. Both the EnGenius ECP106 and the Trendnet TPI-06 are similar in features, they are managed PDUs and have cloud capabilities. Both also have auto reboot capabilities which is the best feature that a managed or smart PDU offers in my opinion. It’s nice to be able to remotely power down a plug from your own network or on the cloud. But that process breaks down when for example a modem needs a hard reboot and you aren’t nearby. Being able to VPN or use the cloud functionality doesn’t work if the PDU is behind a modem that is down. Auto reboot functions that use multiple host pings to detect when things are down can save you a trip out to a job site. Both the ECP106 and the TPI-06 can monitor individual power draw per outlet as well.
But the ECP106 and TPI-06 are also very different, starting with their pricing. Trendnet has the MSRP of the TPI-06 at $249.99 but you can get it for $224.99 on Amazon. The EnGenius ECP106 on the other hand is $599.99. That’s a huge gap between the two. The ECP106 did have recessed mounting options which was an area that I think that the TPI-06 could improve on, even if it is just to leave room for using the front always-on plug. It also has a display screen where you can see wattages and other information without having to log into the web interface. The ECP106 also worked better with its cloud functionality and doesn’t require a yearly service fee. In the end, our TPI-06 wouldn’t connect with Trendnet’s Hive cloud service, but because of the yearly fee, it isn’t something I would use long-term personally. The TPI-06 shines because you have the free web interface and because its pricing is palatable, especially when compared to the ECP106 which shows how much more you could be spending. You get the same outlet monitoring and all of the smart functionality without completely breaking the bank.
Live Pricing: HERE
