IBM keeps an eye on mainframe power

IBM has announced a new software solution that will allow its customers to track the energy consumption of its z9 mainframes.

The software it has created could be useful for companies that want to track exactly how much energy their largest systems are using so that they can conform to environmental rules.

The metering software, which IBM has dubbed the "Mainframe Gas Gauge", but which has no formal name, will fit in with current systems on mainframes that are used to monitor the wattage used each hour. IBM says there are approximately 1,000 such systems in place.

The company said the new metering system is being launched with an application that "consolidates real-world consumption figures by model for System z9".

IBM has summarised the data on all its mainframes since August, when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the report to the US Congress on Data Centre and Server Energy Efficiency.

While collecting the data, IBM said it established that typical z9 energy use is normally 60 percent of the maximum possible power usage.

David Anderson, a so-called green consultant for IBM, said: "The mainframe's high utilisation rates and extreme virtualisation capability may help make it a more energy-efficient choice for large enterprises."

The reason, he said, is because "a single mainframe running Linux may be able to perform the same amount of work as approximately 250 Intel or AMD processors while using as little as two to 10 percent of the amount of energy".

The Mainframe Gas Gauge works by IBM monitoring a mainframe's energy and cooling statistics, which are collected by internal sensors. These are presented in real-time on the system's activity display. This allows the user to correlate the energy consumed with work performed.

The mainframe will check and report on the Gas Gauge on a weekly basis.