Cassatt Active Response
Standard Edition

For increased energy efficiency

Product Overview

Ideal for computing environments with cyclical and predictable usage of servers, where many servers sit idle for long periods of time, Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition enables administrators to set policies to power all physical and virtual servers off and on—safely, intelligently, and systematically—based on time of day, demand, utility company curtailments from power emergencies, and facility requirements and operational needs.

• Policy-Based—Business conditions aren't hard-wired, and neither is determination of when servers need to be used. Cassatt Active Response software leverages policies based on any combination of time, external events, compute capacity, or server demand-to deliver a completely flexible approach to controlling resource efficiency.
• Application Aware—Understands application inter-dependencies shared across multiple servers and knows when and how applications must be systematically powered off and brought back on with no impact to users.
• Hardware and Software Independent—Runs on any platform, requires no change to existing hardware and software configurations, including virtual machines, and is compatible with existing power distribution/UPS equipment.

An easy-to-implement solution to help you manage your power and cooling situation immediately, Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition can generate reports estimating power usage and savings, grouped by department.

Active Power Management

The underlying technology in Cassatt Active Response that makes it safe to turn servers off and on is Cassatt Active Power Management. This patent-pending technology uses a sophisticated policy engine that takes into account server priorities and needs, server and application dependencies and interrelationships, and individual server power consumption in deciding when to power machines down or up.

Active Power Management takes into account variables such as peak and off-peak power schedules, time-of-day, and emergencies such as “demand curtailment” mandates from power companies to reduce electrical consumption-for example, on hot summer weekdays. The technology determines which servers to power down, and for how long, and then safely manages application requirements before turning them back on as application demand warrants. As servers are needed again-or, as failover systems are needed to expand the pool of available resources to meet service level agreements for application delivery-the technology applies the same logic and priorities to power those servers back on as appropriate.

Complementary to Virtualization and Consolidation Projects

The Cassatt Active Power Management approach is complementary to current data center energy efficiency strategies-such as upgrading to more energy-efficient servers, improving HVAC efficiencies, smart power distribution systems, server consolidation, and virtualization. Organizations implementing a server virtualization strategy can gain not only the benefits of using fewer servers, but, with Active Power Management will also be able to extend those benefits to all power-management scenarios across all virtual and physical servers. Because it is faster and easier to implement than existing strategies, Active Power Management is an ideal first move to take when striving to cut power consumption. Cassatt's approach has been shown to reduce power usage by as much as 50 percent on top of what customers achieve with their existing efficiency plans.

Product Features and Capabilities

• Demand-based power management policies
  When server idle states are hard to predict, Cassatt Active Response can detect when a server becomes idle-using metrics IT management determines. Only then will a graceful shutdown of a server begin. So, in the case of a server farm, Cassatt Active Response can sequentially power down individual machines as demand decreases, powering them back up again as demand begins to rise.
• Event-based power management policies
  Allow for planned or emergency events to trigger the graceful, dependency-sensitive shut down of servers during an event, as well as a similarly orderly restart. For example, a facilities cooling failure emergency might trigger a partial or complete shutdown to avoid equipment damage - followed by a controlled re-start once the event has passed.
• Time-based power-management policies
  Achieve significant cost-savings by powering off servers that have cyclical workloads, such as those in dev/test environments. The user interface shown below shows nighttime policies in action, where some servers are powered off based on user-defined policies and some server groups are powered down completely.
• Automatically power physical servers on and off
  IT servers, especially those reserved for peak demand “headroom,” sit idle for most of their lives, continuously consuming power and putting additional and unnecessary load on cooling equipment. Many of today's servers draw as much as half of full-load power even when idle. Cassatt's policy-driven controls automatically power off hardware that is not in use (distinct from a “standby” power mode). Hardware is powered on again when required. Powering off unused servers can deliver two to three times more power savings than achieved through power-efficient servers/CPUs alone.
• Power-conscious standby infrastructure
  Servers used for failover, on-location High-Availability (HA) and/or off-location Disaster Recovery (DR), sit idle for most of their useful lives, continuously consuming power. Cassatt automatically powers off HA and DR hardware that is not in use, powering on hardware only when needed.

• Power off servers with low-priority applications during power emergencies
  Occasionally, power suppliers may declare a power shortage and request or mandate that customers turn off unneeded equipment, potentially including data center servers. Cassatt assigns priority levels to applications as well as to servers, providing the capability to physically shut down, or reschedule, low-priority applications and servers. In addition, Cassatt proactively manages rolling blackouts by reducing power consumption to pre-defined target levels BEFORE the blackout occurs. Avoid costly (up to five-fold) increases in electric rates during these critical power-usage periods. Earn rebates from the utility company-which can pay a significant portion of implementation costs.
• Graceful IT curtailment/shutdown during unplanned environmental conditions
  Due to environmental conditions (shortage of power, cooling, etc.) management may not have sufficient time to properly curtail, shut down, or migrate away from critical applications and loads. Cassatt coordinates the automated curtailment/shutdown of servers together with environmental systems including HVAC systems, temperature sensors, and/or remaining uptime on emergency power.
• Manage servers without capturing application images
  Easily deploy Active Power Management technology, reduce power consumption, and achieve savings quickly with no changes to infrastructure or applications.
• Power servers on/off by using a managed PDU
  Achieve power savings without having to replace power-hungry older servers that don't have power controllers.
• Manage service levels (min, max, target capacity) on a group of servers
  Achieve power savings without the need to replace power-hungry older servers that don't have power controllers.
• Shut down servers containing sensitive information when they are not needed
  Reduce the risk of virus outbreaks and intrusions by turning off unused severs at night, when most malicious virus and intrusion activity occurs.

• Facilities overrides for power-management policies
  Allow stakeholders/end-users to opt-out of power-management policies based on their business needs (e.g., critical builds, patch release, debug cycle).
• Optimize and prioritize application service in power-limited facilities
  Allow sites maxed-out on power to manage different application workloads by selectively powering on/off groups of servers.
• Gain greater insight into power usage patterns for different areas in your business
  Graphical reports, such as the one shown below, enable you to monitor actual and estimated departmental power usage and savings.

• Integration points for 3rd-party infrastructure management products
  Enables communication with other IT management products such as system management software, load balancers, and configuration management systems.