Modius helps manage data center energy usage in context of uptime

Chances are you are way sick of me writing about tools that help you measure the various energy metrics of your data center, because you probably have way too many separate management tools to deal with already.

But you MAY be interested in a company, Modius, that apparently has created an ecosystem of monitoring and measurement tools that helps you balance the most important metric of your data center -- uptime -- with the way that it consumes electricity. "You need to be able to see the interrelationships," says Craig Compiano, CEO of Modius.

The path to energy efficiency is pretty simple, on paper. Either you modulate the energy used by the cooling units or you modulate the power consumed by the servers themselves. But which metric to adjust, and when, is tough to predict. And, oh, by the way, these are probably decisions made by two different constituents who hold sway over data centers: facilities managers vs. IT managers.

Through its Technology Alliance Program, Modius has created a Web services interface for its Open Data platform that will help feed key performance indicators about the performance of your computer room air condition units and other energy efficiency metrics into traditional enterprise management software platforms from the usual suspects. OpenData can also federate to asset and planning tools, building controls systems, and virtual load management tools.

Compiano's thesis is that energy efficiency need to be considered in the context of uptime before a manager can reasonably be expected to make adjustments.

Modius actually has some pretty cool resources on its site, including this report called "The Science of Management,"

which is written by two data center efficiency experts: Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University, and John Stanley with the 451 Group, who earned his master's degree from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.