Eaton's Global IT Newsletter

Volume 5 Issue 2.

Data Center Forum

Forum focus: Overcoming eight common power management challenges

IT Perspective

Customer Voice

Data Center Interactive

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Data Center Forum

Letter from Jeff Ames:

Pain Relief
Most data centers use stateof-the-art tools to manage their server infrastructure. The solutions they employ to monitor and manage their power infrastructure, by contrast, are often surprisingly crude.
Some such applications support only one manufacturers power quality products. Others lack features for important tasks like asset management and updating firmware. Most do a poor job of integrating both with server management products and each other. The upshot for data center managers is a lot of unnecessary misery. What they need is firm control over all of their power quality assets at all of their facilities through a single command console. What they too often get is a fragmented view of power devices and limited ability to discover, track and administer them. As a result, tackling common power quality challenges is a lot more painful than it ought to be. The good news, however, is that help is now available. Using a new generation of more sophisticated monitoring and management solutions, businesses can rid themselves of their worst and most persistent power management headaches. In this issue of Data Center Forum, Eatons Jim Tessier examines eight of those headaches, and explains how todays intelligent, logical and complete power management solutions can help cure them. If collecting status information on power devices from across the enterprise, protecting virtualized workloads during utility outages or ensuring that uninterruptible power systems remain continuously available are issues you struggle with, you wont want to miss this insightful article. Youll also want to check out our profile of Corporate Information Technologies Inc., an IT integration firm based in Charlotte, N.C., that serves small and midsize companies throughout the southeastern United States. Outsourced IT administration is one of their service offerings, but for many years they had no means of managing power quality hardware from offsite. As our story reveals, though, deploying more advanced power management software not only equipped them to administer power devices remotely but gave them potent new ways to keep their customers servers up and running as well. Finally, dont miss the latest edition of our Data Center Interactive section, where youll learn about several monitoring and management challenges that make overseeing a data center look comparatively simple. Theres also information on the latest trends in data center power consumption, an interesting look at the impact cloud computing is having on global energy usage and a new poll question to answer. Enter the contests for a chance to win power view Binoculars. Power management difficulties have been the cause of too much pain for too many people. If youre among them, Im confident that the advice and analysis on the following pages will put you on the road to relief.

Jeff Ames

Senior Business Unit Manager, Distributed Power Solutions

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IT Perspective

Overcoming eight common Power Management challenges

How intelligent, logical and complete power management solutions provide relief for some of todays worst power-related headaches
Eight challenges:
1. Aggregating power quality device information 2. Protecting workloads during power outages 3. Monitoring and managing virtualized server environments 4. Maintaining power system reliability 5. Administering remote data centers 6. Tracking power quality assets 7 Managing use-based . electricity billing schemes 8. Configuring and updating firmware

Today, many organizations use standalone software from multiple vendors to monitor and manage their uninterruptible power systems (UPSs), power distribution units (PDUs) and other crucial power quality and environmental devices. Short on features and poorly integrated with other management resources, these outdated applications only add further complexity to a variety of common power-related administrative challenges. This editorial discusses eight such challenges and shows how a new generation of intelligent, logical and complete power management solutions can help data center managers tackle each of them effectively and efficiently.

Figure 1. A comprehensive view of power and environmental devices by power management solutions.

Common power monitoring & management problems

Though no two organizations are exactly alike, their IT and facilities staffs often face similar power monitoring and management issues. Fortunately, the latest generation of intelligent, logical and complete power management solutions can help organizations address those issues more successfully.

however, several factors make assembling a consolidated view of power protection and distribution systems tricky. For one, most businesses today use UPSs and PDUs from multiple manufacturers. Some of those systems lack a connector card, and most of them come with standalone power management solutions that can be difficult to integrate. In addition, many older power management solutions are incapable of monitoring power quality systems outside the data center in locations such as branch offices and lab facilities. The end result of all these issues is that data center managers end up with a fragmented and incomplete view of their power infrastructure. Todays intelligent power management solutions help organizations address these problems by providing a truly global view of their power quality infrastructure through a single console. Such systems are compatible with networkenabled power devices

One solution:
Intelligent, logical and complete power management software

Aggregating power quality device information

To be certain that all of their power quality systems are functioning properly, data center managers need complete, real-time status information from every such device in their IT infrastructure. At present,
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IT Perspective

including most UPSs, environmental sensors and PDUs no matter where they are located. Thus, IT and facilities personnel can easily monitor and manage all of their power quality hardware, both inside and outside the data center, and reduce their exposure to costly and disruptive downtime. Furthermore, intelligent power management solutions typically come with auto-discovery functionality that accelerates and simplifies the setup process by detecting power devices on the network automatically. They can even discover and support UPSs with no connector card, provided such devices are directly connected to a network-enabled PC. That gives administrators a truly comprehensive view of their power quality hardware. Administrators can also group and display devices in logicallyarranged tree structures that enable them to identify and manage their power systems more easily.

their technicians and potentially delaying response times when problems occur. Intelligent power management solutions integrate closely with leading virtualization management products such as VMwares vCenter Server, enabling IT and facilities personnel to view, monitor and administer not only physical and virtual servers but UPSs, PDUs and other power devices through one console. They also enable virtualization management products to provide a comprehensive view of network- and power-related alerts. That spares administrators from having to watch for alarms in two or more different places, and dramatically reduces the chances of serious issues going unnoticed. Whats more, drawing on seamless integration with live migration systems such as VMwares vMotion, intelligent power management solutions can automatically and transparently move virtual machines from host servers impacted by a power outage to unaffected servers elsewhere on the network; they can even move virtual machines to co-located cloud data centers. As a result, businesses can

Figure 2. Should a power outage threaten to outlast UPS battery capacity, intelligent power protection software can shut down impacted servers automatically and gracefully.

encounter a prolonged power loss. Intelligent power management software helps technicians deal with power outages more efficiently. For starters, the latest power management solutions let technicians divide receptacles on their UPS hardware into separate load segments that can be monitored and administered individually. By grouping their least important infrastructure resources together in distinct load segments, companies can position themselves to make non-essential systems the first ones they shut down during a power outage. That conserves battery capacity and maximizes the amount of backup power available to keep mission-critical devices up and running. In addition, during extended electrical service interruptions next-generation power protection solutions can shut down affected servers and network devices gracefully and automatically, protecting unsaved work and preserving data integrity.

uptime, businesses are rapidly implementing server virtualization in their data centers. In fact, nearly 50 percent of server workloads will be running on virtual machines by the end of 2012, according to analyst firm Gartner Inc. Many organizations use virtualization management software to administer their virtual environments. Such systems provide centralized control over host servers, virtual machines, storage and more. At present, though, many users of virtualization management suites must employ a separate set of management tools to monitor their power infrastructure, weakening the productivity of

Protecting workloads during power outages

Since no power utility or power grid is infallible, data centers are virtually guaranteed to experience electrical service interruptions at least occasionally. Minimizing the impact of such incidents is among a data center managers most important responsibilities. UPSs offer crucial assistance by providing emergency backup power. However, should an electrical outage exceed the runtime of their UPS batteries, organizations must shut down affected servers promptly to prevent software corruption and data loss. Today, unfortunately, many data centers must execute that process manually, forcing them to engage in a high-stakes race against time whenever they

Monitoring & managing virtualized server environments

Eager to lower hardware spending, simplify management and ensure continual

Figure 3: Intelligent power management systems integrate with leading virtualization management products such as VMwares vCenter Server. In this example, administrators can monitor and manage power systems by clicking a tab in the vCenter Server dashboard.

EATON CORPORATION www.eaton.com/dcf 1.800.635.1207 ext.1701880

IT Perspective

so long as it is equipped with a browser and has access to the network.

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Figure 4: Integration with virtualization management systems like vCenter Server enables intelligent power management solutions to log power-related events alongside other infrastructure events. vCenter can then act on those events automatically, moving or shutting down virtual machines as needed. weather even serious power outages without suffering data loss or application downtime. variety of informative reports, or export data to spreadsheet programs for deeper analysis. That, in turn, can help them prevent downtime by proactively identifying and addressing impending failures, overloaded UPSs or UPSs in need of rebalancing. enabled power devices wherever they are positioned. Thus, technicians can administer not only the facility they are in but also remote data centers through the same console. What is more, the latest power management systems feature Web-based interfaces, so IT and facilities managers can run them from any device in any location,

Tracking power quality assets

Data centers are dynamic environments in which equipment is constantly being added, removed and re-located. As a result, IT and facilities managers often struggle to maintain complete and accurate records of how many power devices they own and where those devices reside. Intelligent power management solutions simplify asset tracking by making it easy to record changes in an organizations power infrastructure, such as moves, additions and retirements. And since the latest power management systems have visibility into every power system on the network, their asset tracking abilities extend beyond the data center to

Maintaining power system reliability

In an emergency, the effects of a UPS failure can be devastating. Yet most organizations today are ill-equipped to spot warning signs of future trouble, such as deteriorating performance or an overheating battery. Intelligent power management products provide real-time notification of such issues as they develop, empowering technicians to take action before serious breakdowns occur. Administrators can even specify whether they wish to receive such alerts through e-mail, network popups or in other ways. Additionally, the latest power management systems collect and archive enterprise-wide UPS performance data. Drawing on that information, administrators can generate a

Administering remote data centers

Network infrastructures are more distributed than ever these days. Most large companies maintain multiple data centers, and even midsize organizations often have IT assets in more than one place. However, the power management systems that most businesses utilize at present can support only one site at a time. Moreover, to access those systems, technicians often must use a dedicated workstation physically located within the data center or other facility being managed. Intelligent power management solutions, by contrast, can monitor and control network-

Figure 5: Integration with virtualization management systems like vCenter Server enables intelligent power management solutions to log power-related events alongside other infrastructure events. vCenter can then act on those events automatically, moving or shutting down virtual machines as needed.

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IT Perspective
Conclusion

The outdated and poorly integrated monitoring and management software many organizations rely on at present offers little help with many of todays most common and pressing powerrelated challenges. Fortunately, however, organizations now have access to a new generation of intelligent, logical and complete power management solutions that are significantly better equipped to help companies overcome such challenges. Using these systems, IT and facilities personnel can view comprehensive information about network-enabled power and environmental systems, protect both physical and virtual servers during power outages, perform proactive maintenance and more from any location and on any device with a network connection and Web browser. Organizations eager to preserve data integrity and keep mission-critical systems continuously available should further investigate the latest power management products to learn more about the assistance they can offer in relieving painful powerrelated headaches.

Figure 6. Intelligent power management solutions make tracking and managing power-related assets easier. branch and local deployments as well. Additionally, most intelligent power management software offers functionality that technicians can use to file notes about the physical location of power and environmental devices, further simplifying asset management. Finally, some power management systems interface automatically with asset management solutions, further streamlining the asset tracking process. of resources, data centers are increasingly adopting use-based electricity billing schemes in which facilities managers charge a companys various divisions separately for their share of the power bill. Collecting the division-level usage statistics necessary to make such schemes work, however, can be a challenge. Intelligent power management solutions help simplify that task by enabling facilities managers to monitor and manage power quality devices in groups that correspond to their various business units. They can then create reports showing how much power each group consumed, and bill the appropriate business unit accordingly.

Configuring and updating firmware

Managing use-based electricity billing schemes

For most organizations today, upgrading firmware on UPS connector cards is a tedious and expensive process in which technicians must physically visit and update each device individually. Intelligent power management systems, however, enable administrators to upgrade all of their UPS hardware at once over the network, significantly reducing the cost and complexity of rolling out new commands, features and functions.

Looking to apportion costs more fairly and encourage more efficient consumption

EATON CORPORATION www.eaton.com/dcf 1.800.635.1207 ext.1701880

Customer Voice

Eaton solution fully leverages the virtual environment

Company: Corporate Information Technologies Inc. Location: Charlotte, N.C. Application: Power protection and management Challenge: Monitor and control UPSs at remote customer sites and keep virtual machines at those sites continuously available. Solution: Eaton 5125 UPS and Intelligent Power Manager software Results: Drawing on its UPS hardware and sophisticated new power management capabilities, Corporate Information Technologies is now able to: Monitor and manage remote UPSs without ever leaving their facility Maintain continuous uptime and availability Automatically transfer virtual machines from one server to another during maintenance procedures or emergencies without powering anything down Keep all devices online until they can safely power down during extended power outages

Corporate Information TechnologiesTM (CIT) helps small businesses to medium enterprises in and around the Charlotte, N.C., and the central piedmont Carolinas regions with their IT needs. A VMware Enterprise Partner, CIT puts virtualization to use for its clients, educating them on how this solution can greatly reduce IT costs.

Challenge
When Lawrence Cruciana, president and chief systems engineer for CIT, was first introduced to Eatons uninterruptible power system (UPS) products, his company wasnt at a place where it was looking to change. CIT had been using another companys UPS units for many years. We had seen units get abused, damaged, struck by lightning, flooded and they kept on working. So, we really werent in the market to replace that vendor, says Cruciana. My mentality was, We have this great equipment, why would we want to change? However, in comparing the claims of his current UPS to the one Eaton offers, there is a key difference compatibility with virtualized environments. Eaton delivers a solution that not only matches the performance and durability of Crucianas existing product, but goes a step further by providing software that enables seamless integration with VMwares virtualization platform.

Solution
Among the biggest boons for Eatons Intelligent Power Manager takes the idea of virtualization and works within the framework of the future. Rather than viewing a VMware infrastructure as a traditional physical server infrastructure, they [Eaton] view it as what it is, which is virtual and much more flexible. Theyre just leveraging that flexibility and those capabilities much better than the competition, says Cruciana. Intelligent Power Manager allows multiple power devices (e.g., UPSs, ePDUs, environmental sensors) to be monitored and managed on one computer screen. The program offers users a global view across the network from any PC with a Web browser or VMwares vCenter dashboard. For a company like CIT that manages its own power devices as well as those of its clients, Intelligent Power Manager opens up a world of insight. We dont have to ask, Whats going on with the power? We can see it all. We can manage it remotely and control it remotely. The

EATON CORPORATION www.eaton.com/dcf 1.800.635.1207 ext.1701880

Customer Voice

ability to have an all-in-one management window offers an efficient solution to onsite and off-site management.

Implementation
For a UPS as revolutionary as Not long after meeting with Eaton representatives at the TechSelect Partner Conference, Cruciana says an Eaton 5125 Tower UPS arrives at his office with a note prompting him to install it, kick the tires and tell me what you think, A week later, he says, his engineering team provides feedback on the UPS and the software: This is amazing! Wow! You have to check this software out. This is great. Eatons desire to exceed expectations doesnt stop there. Since CIT clients are not classified as large enterprises, Eaton did something that was absolutely shocking to me in a power market, Cruciana says. "A human being showed up at my office and said, Hi, let me learn about your business and lets actually talk about what you do and how we can solve these things together. Just the fact that there was a physical human being that was willing to engage me and engage our clients in conjunction with us was tremendous. Absolutely tremendous.

Searching for proven ability, Crucianas engineering team puts the product through their routine in-house testing. They dig beyond just viewing the power systems that are protecting the servers hosting all the virtual machines. That was impressive in and of itself, says Cruciana, but, then we started doing testing to try and validate the claims that Eaton had made, because anyone can make a marketing claim. The technology claim that most interests Cruciana is the ability to trigger VMware's vMotion during a power outage to transparently move virtual machines onto other, available servers on the network. When that proved to not only be true, but incredibly easy to configure it and integrate it that was, Wow. Im totally impressed with this, Cruciana says. What they said it would do it does. In addition to the features of the product, Cruciana is pleased with the fact that support for up to 10 devices is included at no charge. For small businesses, thats huge. It really strengthens the value statement they [Eaton] can make for the product.

CIT now has Eaton UPSs in their clients infrastructures with successful integrations. It works in our environment, customers are interested in it, it does what it says its going to do. That now is our go-to product.

It works in our environment, customers are interested in it, it does what it says its going to do. That now is our go-to product. Lawrence Cruciana President and Chief Systems Engineer
With Intelligent Power Manager software in place, Corporate Information Technologies is now able to: Monitor and manage all units connected to the system, without ever leaving their facility Maintain continuous uptime and availability Transfer virtual machines from one power unit to another without powering anything down Keep all devices online until they can safely power down during extended power outages Call Eatons technical support staff for anytime assistance

Results
The ultimate test came when CIT recently invited customers to its office to witness the UPS and Intelligent Power Manager solution. There was immediate, literally immediate, interest. Hey, this is really impressive technology, says Cruciana. We saw that there was customer interest to the level that we should probably replace some of the UPS systems or strongly consider Eaton for the replacement of the UPS systems because of this one differentiator the technology.

EATON CORPORATION www.eaton.com/dcf 1.800.635.1207 ext.1701880

Data Center Interactive

Brain Teasers: Rack your IT brain

Global forum
Businesses around the world are steadily adopting cloud computing, thanks in large part to the efficiencies it makes possible in areas such as management and hardware procurement. A recent study from clean technology research and consulting firm Pike Research, however, suggests that the cloud could also enable similar efficiencies in energy consumption. The report predicts that rapid adoption of cloud solutions will lower data center electricity usage from 201.8 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2010 to 139.8 TWh by 2020, a 31 percent decrease. Furthermore, the study says, cloud computing will help data centers cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 28 percent and lower energy spending from $23.3 billion to $16.0 billion over the same ten-year span. Few, if any, clean technologies have the capability to reduce energy expenditures and GHG production with so little business disruption, said Pike Research senior analyst Eric Woods in a press release about the study. The report credits the higher server utilization rates and economies of scale at cloud data centers for the savings they enable. It also predicts that large cloud facilities will be so much more efficient than smaller ones that most organizations will ultimately outsource much of the computing work they currently perform on site to third-party cloud service providers. To download a copy of the report, visit http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/cloud-computing-energyefficiency.

Fast facts
U.S. servers and data centers will consume an estimated 100 billion kilowatt hours of energy in 2011 at a cost of $7 billion, .4 according to research from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The same research predicts that the peak load on the nations power grid from all of that power usage will be 12,000,000 kilowatts. Half of organizations with data centers measuring between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet expect to have insufficient electrical power in 2011, according to a survey from IT analyst firm Nemertes Research Group Inc., of Mokena, Ill. Nemertes also reports that only 45 percent of organizations with data centers in that size range actually measure their power usage Utility power outages and voltage sags cost U.S. businesses more than $100 billion a year, according to the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Did you know?

Think monitoring and managing your power quality assets is difficult? Try coping with these monitoring and management challenges The Federal Aviation Administrations Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon, Va., is responsible for tracking over 7 ,000 takeoffs and landings an hour and about 50,000 aircraft a day. The New York City Transit division of the states Metropolitan Transportation Authority oversees some 6,380 subways cars from a control center roughly half the size of a football field that contains 55 voice and data workstations and 22 wall-mounted projection displays. The U.S. Defense Departments Joint Space Operations Center monitors more than 19,000 pieces of space debris currently orbiting the Earth, some as small as approximately 10 centimeters, from a command facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California. AT&T manages a network that supports 127 billion phone calls and 457 billion text messages a year from a Global Network Operations Center in Bedminster, N.J., equipped with 141 giant screens showing everything from network activity to the latest news events.

Polling questions
Send us your response and be one of 10 early bird winners of maglite flashlights How many standalone power management solutions does your company use today?

A. None B. One C. Two

D. Three E. Four or more

Maglite flashlight
Submit your poll at www.eaton.com/dcf

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Data Center Interactive

Glossary
Connector card: Device that links a server, uninterruptible power system or other piece of hardware to the network. Firmware: Instructions saved on a hardware devices read-only memory. Host server: In virtualization, the physical server used to host multiple virtual servers. Live migration: Moving virtual servers from one host server to another without first shutting them down. Load segment: A subset of the power outlets on an uninterruptible power system or power distribution unit. Many power quality products allow technicians to manage load segments independently of one another. Virtual machine: In virtualization, a software file that performs the functions of a physical server.

Contest
Participate in our Tell me your story contest for a chance to win power view Bushnell Binoculars How do you spell relief? Tell us about your favorite solution to a power management pain not discussed in this issue of Data Center Forum. Our prize goes to the best idea we receive!

Bushnell Binoculars

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Contact Us
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