Managed CPE Services and Green Data Center

Data Center Energy Efficiency is the new buzz word. There are several creative solutions on the market from controlling HVAC to virtualizing physical servers.

One of the data center energy savings methods is very simple. Find the clusters that are not fully utilized (e.g proxy cluster) and then shutdown the idle servers in the cluster farm, monitor utilization on active servers and boot spares to join cluster when needed. You do not have to have hot cluster members in cluster where more than 2 members exist.(unless this is required by utilization)… Batch task servers can be shutdown as well.

This action requires 7x24 careful monitoring and usually a service solution that can pass turing test. Managed Service Providers and managed security services providers do carry the know-how to monitor every cluster member and interfere full device boot cycle as of today. That is why we are not far away from “energy saving” offerings from Managed CPE providers.

On the operational level, simple SNMP monitoring of cluster members or monitoring the monitor (F5 LTM / Citrix Netscaler) systems will do the gratious shutdowns and joins for the unused cluseter members at no cost.

Let’s wait and see more creative offerings from MSPs and MSSPs. On the other hand, I personally believe that the data centers are cutting the emissions regardless of their green image. Data centers deliver massive automation and they do eliminate the traditional emission sources such are vehicles. (and unfortunately sometimes people)