Here’s a way to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in
energy consumption this Halloween: target those ghost servers creeping around your
data center with Chatsworth Products’ (CPI) intelligent power solution:
eConnect® Power Distribution Units (PDUs) and Power IQ® for eConnect.
Ghosts or “zombie” servers haunt even the most sophisticated
organizations and are one of the largest consumers of energy within the data
center environment. They are servers that are either not running any workloads
or are underutilized, but still consume power.
A recent research co-authored by consultancy Anthesis Group and Stanford University found that 30 percent of servers in data centers are ghosts. According to the findings, there are about 10 million ghost servers worldwide, which translates to roughly $30 billion in data center capital sitting idle in the globe.
By eliminating ghost servers, IT managers not only reduce
energy consumption and improve capacity, but also save thousands in incurring
software licensing and hardware maintenance costs.
In order to manage power consumption properly, measurement
is key. Knowing baseline power consumption of servers during their normal
compute operation when they are provisioned is a good starting point.
Actual power consumption of a server can be determined by
utilizing intelligent PDUs with metering at the outlet level, such as eConnect
Monitored Pro and Switched Pro PDUs from CPI.
CPI’s Monitored and Switched Pro eConnect provide reliable
power distribution for evolving data centers, while providing per-outlet
monitoring of voltage, current, power (kW) and energy (kilowatt-hour) levels
with a ±1% metering accuracy for each piece of equipment. eConnect Switched Pro
PDUs also provide remote control (on/off/cycle) of each outlet.
Curious about eConnect’s functionalities? Try the eConnect Online Software Demo.
Using a power management software application such as CPI's Power IQ for eConnect allows IT managers to track the historical consumption
reports of the servers so that they can compare them against the baseline
consumption. These reports can be scheduled at regular intervals or generated
on demand. By monitoring low power consumption against a baseline you can determine potential ghost server candidates. A utilization study of all the candidates would further determine the ones that should be decommissioned.
See the benefits of Power IQ software for yourself. Test drive Power IQ to experience its functionality.
“Removing idle servers would result in gigawatt-scale
reductions in global IT load, the displaced power use from which could then
support new IT loads that actually deliver business value. That’s a result that
everyone should cheer,” concludes Jonathan Koomey, PhD, one of the authors of
the server utilization research.
On that note, ongoing measurement and management of the IT server
infrastructure are key factors to achieving IT efficiency.
CPI’s power management solutions will protect your
technology investment, while allowing for full use of rack space, redundancy
and future growth. Learn more about CPI’s approach to power management.
Raissa Carey, Technical Writer