Cassatt Announces Green Computing Strategy

If you'll recall, I posted a series on virtualization and green computing back in May. It seems to me that while virtualization technology won't solve all of the problems of power utilization and heat production in a modern datacenter, the proper use of this technology could certainly help. I was expecting some of the key innovators in virtualization technology to pick up that theme and run with it. Cassatt stepped forward on September 4, 2007 with an announcement that clearly is a step in that direction.

Here is a portion of their announcement.

Cassatt® Corporation, a leader in innovative solutions to improve resource, operational, and energy efficiencies in the data center, today announced a breakthrough technology that safely and intelligently powers servers off when they are not needed or idle. This technology is the cornerstone of Cassatt’s new strategy for helping customers move toward greener data centers.

Controlled by polices set by administrators and optimized automatically, Cassatt Active Power Management™ technology continually optimizes power consumption based on the time of day, demand, curtailments imposed by power companies, or other facilities-based events. In early tests with Active Power Management, customers have experienced up to 50 percent reduction in their power usage, simply by allowing Active Power Management to turn off servers when idle, and then confirm a successful power-up when they’re needed again.

Here are the specifics.

Cassatt announced a strategy to apply its knowledge of virtualization technology and management of virtualized resources that is different than anything I've heard from other competitors. What sets Cassatt Active Power Management apart from other approaches is the way in it focuses on intelligently working with existing resources in the data center rather than expecting that organizations will virtualize everything in sight to gain benefits of green computing. Cassett's strategy is based upon the following thoughts:

• Policy-Based – Administrators can apply appropriate business policies and priorities in order to determine when, where, and how to shut down idle servers, rather than leave then running 24 by 7 or relying on “hard-wired” power decisions. Polices can then be applied to safely and successfully power servers back on and confirm a successful start up
• Application Aware – Knows when and how applications can be systematically shut down and brought back up gracefully, and is aware of application interdependencies shared across multiple servers
• Hardware and Software Independent – Runs on any platform, requires no change to existing hardware and software configurations, and is compatible with existing power distribution/UPS equipment

Best of all, Cassatt Active Power Management technology does not require modification to hardware or software, nor does it require installing any additional software on managed servers. Rather, it leverages internal power controllers found on most modern servers or external power distribution units. This means the solution can be quickly installed in most data centers with minimum disruption to operations – enabling energy and cost savings to accrue almost immediately

Snapshot Analysis Although no products were launched, it does appear that Cassatt is working with a number of partners to realize its dream. I expect to hear more once pilot projects are successful.