CSC Partners With 1E to Monitor Data Center Energy Use

The metrics and reported results along with CSC's other sustainability initiatives are available at CSC GreenWay.

by Candace Labelle

As a global corporate citizen, CSC invests in sustaining the environment for future generations. In 2009, we started working with 1E, a global leader in IT efficiency software, to reduce our power consumption, deploying NightWatchman® PC power management software to 50,000 workstations. The results were impressive: power consumption of our workstation fleet was reduced by 40 percent.

When we learned of 1E’s new NightWatchman Server Edition in 2010, we wanted to be on the front line with their latest innovation. CSC and 1E agreed to a joint pilot with a twist: an online case study during which CSC would blog on 1E’s website about the progress and results. The companies’ goals for the pilot were to reduce power needs at key data centers, identify opportunities for decommissioning and virtualization, and allow CSC and 1E clients to experience a real-world deployment of the new product.

The project involved deploying the agent-based NightWatchman Server Edition software onto 80 North American Windows-based servers ranging from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 in multiple server rooms and data centers, representing a cross-section of CSC’s server environment.

The software ran in the background for several weeks, collecting baseline data on energy consumption, activity, and Useful WorkTM. The Useful Work engine analyzes the application layer of a server to identify both useful and non-useful (management/support tasks) to expose the usefulness and therefore the efficiency of a server, ensuring it is doing the work the server was commissioned to do.

The Drowsy Server™ power management feature was also tested to ensure servers continued running as expected while entering and exiting from a drowsy state. Servers remained in full production without any performance degradation, outages, or other negative impact. Application owners monitored their servers and did not identify any performance or availability impact.

After more data was gathered, a deeper analysis and update of the processes viewed as Useful Work was completed, and reports were generated. The information made available allows management of server and energy efficiency at a new level. Clear, server-level opportunities for decommissioning and virtualization were provided, with an index to a level of certainty on the recommendation — taking the mystery out of which servers to research and target for reduction.

A view of energy consumed by the fleet or to the server level was made available without hardware, allowing a holistic energy management approach for server room design and management, as well as detailed energy consumption or greenhouse gas reporting. Energy consumption for many servers was reduced using power management for non-Useful Work periods. Additional savings were achieved through cooling avoidance.

To CSC, the process confirmed that the bulk of our servers were fairly well utilized. However, a number of unanticipated decommissioning and virtualization opportunities were highlighted, pointing the way to future server reductions. Additional energy savings were also measured through power management.

Based on the results of the case study, we found that companies can benefit by driving down server numbers, reducing energy bills, and improving server-level energy reporting and management.

CANDACE LABELLE is program director for CSC GreenWay.