White Paper: Active Power Management

Myth: Turning servers off and on increases the likelihood they will fail.

Reality: As stated on the EPA Energy Star web site: “Modern computers are designed to handle 40,000 on-off cycles before failure, and you're not likely to approach that number during the average computer's five- to seven-year life span. In fact, IBM and Hewlett Packard encourage their own employees to turn off idle computers, and some studies indicate it would require on-off cycling every five minutes to harm a hard drive.”

Myth: Over a 3-year lifecycle for a server, electricity is a minor cost consideration.

Reality: According to a white paper from the Uptime Institute, by 2009 the three-year cost of electricity will exceed the purchase cost of most servers. These calculations used a conservative fixed rate of $0.07 per kWh, a rate which most US and European markets have already exceeded.

Myth: It takes more energy to turn a server off for a few hours and then back on again than to just leave it running.

Reality: As noted by the EPA Energy Star program, the small surge of power created when devices such as computers are turned on is vastly smaller than the energy used by running the device when it is not needed.

Myth: The way to gauge the cost of a new data center is by the square footage.

Reality: A white paper from the Uptime Institute states that energy usage, not just square footage, dictates the cost of a new data center. The white paper's title summarizes their findings: “Dollars per kW plus Dollars per Square Foot are a Better Data Center Cost Model than Dollars per Square Foot Alone.”

Myth: Power controlling your servers reduces application availability.

Reality: With Cassatt software, flexible business policies, rather than hard-wired schedules ensure servers are available when needed. Cassatt Active Response also provides an “opt-out” feature where application users or administrators can ensure a particular machine or application is not shut down either on a short-term or long-term basis.

Myth: “Going green” means buying new, lower-powered servers.

Reality: By deploying Cassatt Active Response, you can save 58% without the expense of buying new hardware. When Cassatt software power manages the newer, more efficient hardware, your savings will be even greater.

Myth: Virtualization is the first thing I should do to reduce my power usage.

Reality: You absolutely should pursue virtualization initiatives. Server consolidation using virtualization can save energy by reducing the number of servers. However, virtualization requires effort to re-qualify the operating environment and in some cases requires hardware upgrades. However, starting your energy efficiency efforts with Active Power Management can give you a nearly immediate payback. Active Power Management allows you to turn off idle servers when they aren't needed, eliminating both the energy costs needed to power and cool those servers. Active Power Management works with the existing software configurations on existing servers. In addition, data center-wide implementations of Active Power Management can be delivered in a matter of weeks.

Myth: You can actively manage server power sufficiently using tools that come from the server or blade manufacturers.

Reality: Server and blade manufacturers only provide power management for own their specific type of hardware, not a general purpose solution for the typically heterogeneous data center. In addition, their power management does not provide the policy-based, application aware functionality found in Cassatt Active Response.