Been deciding on the best way to go about shelf power upgrade for a while now at a decent price. Thought I'd share so others looking for ideas can weigh up the pros and cons. I ended up getting several APC PDUs shown similar as in the photo (3x15A sockets and 21x10A). Mine has current monitoring, LAN and a serial interface and I'd put it in the repair friendly category.
Pros: Remote switching, group switching. Simple current monitoring and protection. No need to hunt for switches or have them in a convenient spot. If making a custom interface could be quite flexible. Ideal way to simplify wiring and mounting. Can be always resold or repurposed back into a rack later. Some have environment monitoring and advanced power redundancy features.
Cons: Can be expensive unless you look for surplus units or decommissioned racks. This particular model has no physical switch button, if that is even a thing. Could be one more thing to repair if it dies, but a quick cable swap should get most things back up and running. May need to buy male to female IEC or adapter cables, again look for surplus.
Not a replacement for DUT or temporary outlets but as my shelves are 600mm deep it allows me to position gear without having to dive in to find a switch. Think about walking into the room and pressing a button to turn your gear (only the essentials) on automatically into standby or even on fully depending on the gear. Sort of limitless possibilities if you mess around with the interfaces.