Posted by Donald Klein on Mon, Aug 23, 2010 @ 06:20 PM
Here at Modius, we are seeing an increasing number of requests among Co-locations (Co-los) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to help them capture more robust and accurate power measurement data. In one sense, this trend is nothing new because all data centers—whether captive inside an enterprise or an outsourced service provider—need accurate power measurement, typically for improving:
- Capacity optimization
- Energy efficiency
- Uptime assurance
But we find that Co-lo’s and MSP’s have a special need that takes power reporting to the next level: Providing disaggregated energy consumption and power usage data by customer at a very granular level, often by rack or even a group of servers. Typically, they need detailed power metering for each customer, principally for:
- More accurate customer billing
- Detailed status reporting to the customer (in real-time) through a customer portal
Customers are now wanting this information not only to be sure their power bills are accurate, but also to try and determine their available power capacity, usage trends, and accurate data to support reporting on PUE and Carbon management. Or even more of a challenge, they need to unify data across different locations because their customers are spread across several different buildings.
Theoretically, some of this data can been captured from the servers. In fact, with distributed systems management tools, reporting on server energy consumption (at the server level) is relatively commonplace. But this data source is incomplete. What if you want to factor in cooling and other related energy consumption? Or what if you also want environmental reporting for bottom/middle/top for each rack? Now, this is much more challenging …
In general, most Co-Lo’s don’t have access to the server instrumentation data at the chassis level. And in terms of power and cooling, we’ve found that most co-location providers are still struggling to unify a broad range of equipment into a single monitoring fabric and extend the framework across disparate systems and locations.
Happily, there are several Co-Lo’s operators taking the initiative by unifying their monitoring of power and cooling equipment with a real-time data center monitoring and measurement system like Modius OpenData. And many are augmenting power and cooling data by installing new breaker level metering and. Moreover, many are even using this data to create centralized customer portals to provide their customers with reporting and a real-time view of their power capacity and consumption. Further, they are adding a layer of analytics and baselines on energy efficiency and reliability.
As the industry becomes more competitive, service providers cannot continue with business as usual. Many Co-lo’s and MSP’s have taken this initiative so that they can differentiate themselves, have better visibility on how they can extend their internal resources, and provide PUE and Carbon reporting services to their customers.
We believe the underlying driver behind this trend is the fact that an increasing number of corporations and enterprises with large IT departments are being tasked by their senior management to provide comprehensive reports on power usage and their relative efficiency, regardless of whether the enterprise owns their own data center facilities or outsource part of their infrastructure.
Be it end-users, Co-lo’s or MSP’s, everyone is increasingly looking to software providers like Modius to solve the comprehensive measurement and reporting problem, and we believe they are finding that Modius OpenData is the right product at the right time and value.
Posted by Donald Klein on Mon, Aug 02, 2010 @ 11:43 AM
Enterprise software Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) are often challenging to administer and implement as they typically require the vendor to train, install and implement the software in the client’s facility. This process can prove costly and time consuming for both the vendor and the client.
Modius has solved this challenge by creating a new offering for a “virtual” proof of concept (vPOC). The vPOC allows customers to try Modius OpenData in a secure sandbox environment without installing any local software.
The database is pre-populated with a typical Data Center environment including a full range of data center equipment, including typical ‘heavy equipment’ such as UPS, CRAC, Genset, PDU, as well as rack-level equipment such as iPDU’s and wireless temperature sensors from leading equipment providers including HP, IBM, APC, Emerson, RFCODE, and Server Tech.
The vPOC provides a fully
-functional instance of the Modius OpenData system that the user can manage and administer. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) allows the user to drill through to each device and identify which alarm points are being collected, how they are correlated and distributed, their polling rates, and which “real-time” alarms are critical or require immediate action. Typical customers who are signing up for a Modius vPOC are looking to replace several existing monitoring point solutions (e.g. homegrown, ALC or DataTrax). In addition, they may be looking at Modius OpenData’s “multi-site” capability to consolidate existing infrastructure monitoring across multiple locations with a single repository of easy accessed and reported information for availability, capacity, and performance utilization.
The process to get started is as simple as signing up for the 15-Day free trial. To get started, please see our vPOC registration page for a simple form to have one of our team contact you.
Posted by Donald Klein on Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 05:24 PM
One project that we have been working on at Modius is teaming with our friends at GroundWork Open Source (GWOS) on unifying their comprehensive IT monitoring with Modius facilities infrastructure monitoring.
Here is our recent webcast on the integration between our two products. GWOS hosted this webinar from their offices, and many of the people in the audience were IT Operations professionals.
To watch the webinar, please go here:
Unified Infrastructure Monitoring with Modius & GroundWork
Posted by Mark Harris on Thu, May 20, 2010 @ 11:26 PM
Modius CEO Craig Compiano explains the Modius approach to data center monitoring in this video posted on YouTube.
Originally featured in DataCenterKnowlege.com, this short video provides a short introduction to Modius OpenData.
To see the original article, please go to:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/03/22/data-center-monitoring-with-modius/
From Data Center Knoweledge:
"At Data Center World we had the chance to speak with Craig Compiano, CEO of Modius, a San Francisco company that makes monitoring software for IT infrastructure. Modius’ motto is “measuring more things in more places more easily,” with the ability to integrate power usage and environmental readings from data centers, server rooms, branch offices, and IDF closets. In this video, Compiano provides an overview of Modius and the landscape for monitoring software. This video runs about 2 minutes, 30 seconds."
Posted by Mark Harris on Wed, May 05, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Having walked through my share of data centers, it is always interesting to see such a heterogeneous amalgamation of IT gear that has accumulated since the data center itself was commissioned. While every data center designer and manager starts out with wild fanciful ideals about the pristine architecture of the data center, the actual complexion of the data center changes dramatically over time and we are left with rows and rows of assorted gear, all happily consuming power, blinking LEDs, and perhaps 20%-30% of these devices no longer in use... Zombies abound!
Perhaps Zombies is a harsh word, but the concept is the same. A non-trivial portion of the devices in the data center are powered, generating heat, consuming precious IP addresses, and yet performing NO actual work. Why? Their intended application changed over time, the project was never completed, their original workload was shifted elsewhere, a test bed that was never dismantled, and a dozen other reasons exist for large quantities of machines entering the Zombie realm, but there we have it, machine after machine that is in the living dead state, and WORSE THAN THAT, we do not have enough information about these devices to TURN THEM OFF. So they sit, consuming resources in the safety of the data center, avoiding decommissioning... And here's the myth/rub: A server just idling along just running the operating system consumes 60%-70% of its total power before any workload is applied! A server doing NO work is wasting almost two-thirds of its maximum rated power! Note to self: this is a real issue and not something we can choose to overlook any longer. With the price of power at record highs, and power increasing by 7% per year as far as we can see in the future, WE HAVE to find these Zombies and kill them.
How can we reclaim the resources being consumed by these Zombies? We have to build designs that intelligently monitor power consumption and pro-actively and continually test to see if those resources are efficiently doing work. We need to observe power consumption either directly using embedded sensors (such as the Energy-Star compliance servers) or with intelligent power distribution devices (ideally with per-outlet metrics). Here is the secret: Zombies all have a similar trait... they stay fairly constant in their power consumption. A server will likely consume almost two-thirds of its maximum power before any loads and work is applied. A Zombie server therefore will continue to consume the same two-thirds of its rated values every time you look at it.
Creating new IT best practices which identify the need for per-device power monitoring is the first step. And the second step is deploying an intelligent monitoring tool which has the ability to look over longer periods of time at the energy being consumed on a device level basis. Some simple standard deviation math will result in servers that can no longer hide their 'walking dead' status. Pro-Active monitoring will identify Zombies and allow you to reclaim power, space and cooling quite easily!