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Data Centers Use Less Energy with Joyent Tools
By Ed Silverstein TMCnet Contributor
Data center energy use can be reduced some 25 percent by using Joyent Tools via big data analytics, the company reports.
The tools are also improving a key data center measure called the “power usage effectiveness” (PUE) rating, according to InformationWeek. The PUE measures the total amount of electricity a data center takes in to get a single unit of computing.
Companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft (News 
- Alert) are each trying to get a low PUE rating in new data centers, InformationWeek added. Older data centers have a PUE of about 2, which means they use about twice the power than what’s needed for computing. All of that additional power is used needed for heating/cooling, lights or similar building functions. But many newer data centers have a PUE of about 1.22 or 1.16. And Yahoo has a data center in Lockport, N.Y., with a PUE of 1.07, and Facebook's (News - Alert) Prineville, Ore., data center has a 1.06 PUE rating.
"Operating for efficiency and failing will get you yelled at. Operating for availability and failing will get you fired," Steve Hassell, president of the Avocent business unit of Emerson Network Power (News - Alert), told InformationWeek.
Joyent provides infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) from a dozen data centers. Joyent CEO Jason Hoffman said his company developed the Avocent Universal Management Gateway (News - Alert). It accepts information from the service processor on a server's motherboard, a microcontroller that collects temperature, voltage, and fan speed data. Other information comes from the network interface cards, switches, and other devices on the server rack and in the data center.
“The Universal Management Gateway understands what each device is saying and it can capture, store, and analyze the information,” InformationWeek said.
Emerson's Trellis data center management software gets the information. It is used in connection with four modules: Inventory Manager, Site Manager, Change Planner and Energy Insight.
In addition, Trellis software and the Universal Management Gateway offer "big data and big data analytics for the data center," InformationWeek said.
Also, the Gateway-Trellis offering can lower energy use at a data center by 25 percent, reports Data Center Talk.
These kinds of energy savings are important. A 2007 report from the EPA to Congress noted that data centers were found in almost every sector of the economy. The growth of data centers is a result of increased demand for data processing and storage.
Emerson acquired Avocent (News - Alert) three years ago. It developed "a universal translator" for device languages, Hassell said.
In a related matter, TMCnet reported earlier this year that Emerson Network Power has partnered with Joyent to improve how data center resources are delivered for public and private clouds.
"We selected Emerson as our partner because the Trellis platform is the only DCIM solution available today that can provide holistic, real-time visibility from service processor to power grid and enable the dynamic optimization of data center physical resources," Hoffman was quoted by TMCnet. "Our partnership will enable us to offer a unique, tightly integrated, modular, highly efficient solution that optimizes the entire infrastructure based on the energy consumption of application workloads."
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Edited by Rachel Ramsey
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