Cassatt Corporation this week introduced a novel concept in the management of green data centers--if your servers aren't being used, turn them off. While that's easy enough to say, when you imagine the typical interdependencies of your average online server farm--Server A relies on a DB from Server B, a Web service from Server C, and so on--you'll quickly realize that just flipping the switch on a specific server at a particular time isn't the easy answer you might wish it to be; not to mention the potential catastrophe that could occur if you pulled the plug on a server without gracefully downing each of its individual applications.
If my PC can shut itself down whenever it's idle for more than n number of minutes, why can't all those extra servers in my server farm do the same thing during all those off-peak times when they typically just sit there idle?
Cassatt's new Active Power Management technology is specifically designed with these challenges in mind: Manage the power status of each server in an application aware (noting the interdependencies of each application and using appropriate tools and commands to shut them down gracefully) and policy-based (admins can define which servers to include in the management as well as how and when they should be shut down) manner.
And unlike the typical PC I described above, the technology itself doesn't go to sleep after it shuts down unneeded servers. If conditions and policies warrant it, the technology can also power servers back up as needed, taking care to do so in the same graceful, and application aware manner with which it shut them down in the first place.
While the Cassatt Active Power Management technology has not yet resulted in the release of any
commercially available products, the vendor notes that it is currently testing the technology with early adopters and will provide more product information later this month.
