Power Management-the Smart Way

Managing power consumption is a growing concern in most organizations today.

In many countries the government pays enterprises for each unit of power they

save. And it looks like, that day is not far when India would walk the same

road. Indian organizations also burn a lot of fuel in their data centers to cope

up with power cuts, which in turn increases the power budget in a big way. At

the same time, it also pollutes the environment.

By using a few tricks and some utilities, you can actually save a lot of

power. PCQuest has covered most of these tips in some form or the other in the

recent past. We now bring you all of this in a nutshell.

Monitor power consumption



First things first: To solve any problem you need to understand the problem. To
save power, first you need to identify parts of your datacenter that consume lot

of power, so that you can determine the best course of action after that. For

this, you could also either spend lakhs and buy equipment that will measure the

power. Or you could purchase a few digital wattmeters. These can cost you a few

thousand bucks and are easily available from an electronic meters shop.

Get going



Do a site survey by connecting the wattmeter to different devices such as
CRT/LCD monitors, workstations, servers, racks, printers, switches, and check

which device consumes how much power. Then see if you can replace any of these

devices with others that consume lesser power. For instance, check whether it

would really help to replace some CRTs with LCDs or some old rack mountable

servers to blades, etc. We did the same survey in our own office and figured out

some interesting facts. To know more, visit http://forums.pcquest. com under

Green IT thread.

Logging consumption



Once you have reviewed the power consumption of different devices, it becomes
important to keep an eye on the periodic consumption of power for some of them.

For instance, what is the power consumption pattern of your rack server for

given period of time? Such kind of historical data would help in analyzing the

power consumption pattern in an enterprise. With its help we can analyze when

and why the surges in graph are happening and then one can work on it to

smoothen those surges. For doing this, many devices are available. Raritan

Dominion PX, reviewed PCQ June 2008, is one such device. It remotely

manages/controls power over IP, and now also supports monitoring and logging

power consumption for all outlets.

Managing consumption



Once you are through with monitoring, managing consumption is the next logical
step. The best place to save power is by cutting the power supply where it's not

required. Did you know that a CRT monitor when switched off still consumes

around 5W of power? A standard power extension board eats up around 2 to 5 watts

depending on its wattage and the number of plug points it has. Just imagine how

much power would be wasted if a person leaves his workstation on for the whole

night? Well, the solution is pretty simple, there's a software called Prof

Shutdown that can turn off machines at a given time if no one is working on it.

Such software can save you a lot on your electricity bills. Similarly, devices

like Smart Power Strip, http://catalog.bitsltd.us/index. html, can be used to

save on idle current, which means if any device is not in a running state, this

power strip will recognise it and power off the socket, thereby saving current.

There are a lot of other ways to save power innovatively and we are working

and researching on it. You can also join us in this effort by sharing your

experiences on our online forum forums.pcquest.com