Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

January 27, 2009

Sentilla Flicks Switch on New Energy Management Tool For Data Centers

By Brendan B. Read


Sentilla Corporation, which makes energy management solutions for data centers and commercial facilities, has energized the Sentilla Energy Manager, a new hosted Web-based tool that analyzes power use directly at each piece of equipment, including servers and storage units. It permits managers and IT staff to better measure and manage power consumption, thereby enabling them to increase energy efficiency and lower operating costs.
 
The core of Sentilla's technology is a series of tiny microprocessors embedded in intelligent power strips that easily integrate into any existing data center, measuring energy consumption at the server level to generate an actionable profile of use in a single snapshot that can be remotely managed. The system alerts users to where and when the load is peaking.
 
As power and cooling comprise up to 40 percent of a data center’s costs, the savings achievable via Sentilla Energy Manager by reducing energy consumption can be in the millions of dollars. In doing so, companies will reduce the amount of pollution, including tons of carbon dioxide: a key greenhouse gas responsible for climate change that their electricity demand creates from thermal (coal, gas, oil, ethanol, wood) generating plants, and from transporting those fuels.
 
“Our research shows that 57 percent of organizations consider the electricity consumption of their data centers to be key to their sustainable IT strategy, “ reports Chris Ingle, consulting and research director at IDC (News - Alert). “However it has been difficult to measure this consumption accurately and manual approaches tend to be relatively costly. Technologies that automate this measurement allow companies to properly implement their vision for sustainable IT.”
 
Sentilla Energy Manager is quite simple to use. Through a Web portal and Web services   interfaces, energy consumption is tracked, measured, and analyzed in real time. It is wirelessly communicated to an application server by Sentilla's system that leverages tiny computers placed directly in line with the power to each piece of equipment.

With this fine grained information, the Sentilla Energy Manager provides recommendations that reduce energy use and cost.  It also allows you to set targets, track trends, and validate that the change you are making to your data center are actually reducing your energy and environmental footprint.

 “As energy resources become scarcer and IT and operating budgets get leaner, companies are looking at ways to do more with less,” explains Bob Davis, chief executive officer of Sentilla. “We offer businesses the power to evaluate and subsequently transform energy-draining data centers into more efficient and less costly operations. Already deployed in commercial and industrial facilities, Sentilla’s technology wirelessly calculates the amount of energy a given machine is utilizing so that managers have the knowledge they need to reduce consumption.”

In beta testing the Sentilla Energy Manager, data center customer obtained insights on power usage without deploying software agents or network queries. It identified the efficiency of each server, their load, disk usage, and mechanical operations solely through analysis of the equipment's energy consumption data.
 
The resulting recommendations provide a basis for the data center operations to increase energy efficiency, reduce their carbon footprint, and save money. For those data centers that are power constrained, it provides a path to increase computing capacity without a corresponding increase in power consumption.
 
“Sun is a big proponent of leveraging new, innovative technologies to help us reduce our carbon footprint and continue our drive toward sustainability,” says Subodh Bapat, vice president and distinguished engineer, Eco Responsibility Office, Sun Microsystems (News - Alert).

“Sentilla's solution hones in on the central issues of energy efficiency and sustainability, which is our demand for efficient, intelligent use of available energy. The Sentilla Energy Manager provides companies the ability to reduce their energy usage and reduce their carbon footprint, resulting in a more robust bottom line,” added Bapat.
 
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is Fixed Service Strategies for Mobile Network Operators, brought to you by Comverse (News - Alert).



Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Michelle Robart


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