Intel Corp. has partnered with Vancouver, B.C.-based software company TSO Logic to provide data centre administrators with tools that will help them better monitor and control power cost and usage.
TSO’s software enables organizations to track the power consumed by individual applications and this allows data centre administrators to better manage cost by enabling them to power down servers that are not in use of limit activity for certain apps, according to Aaron Rallo, CEO and founder of TSO.
“However, in order to accomplish this, the software needs to be able to access data inside the servers, sensors and other hardware to get the performance algorithms,” said Rallo. “With this partnership, Intel is providing us with its software development kit for all the big server vendors and this provides access to data about power consumption and other variables.”
The integration of Intel’s Data Centre Manager (DCM) software to TSO Logic’s Application-Aware Power Management solution will facilitate communication with products of hardware manufacturers such as IBM and Dell and help unlock power control capabilities for the industry without TSO “having to re-invent the wheel for every server vendor,” said Rallo.
Prior to the agreement, TSO needed to work individually with server vendors to get the data they needed. Some large vendors are also not always keen on engaging in joint ventures with smaller companies. As a result, TSO works with only a small number of server models which includes blade systems from Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Russell Sprunger, business development manager at Intel, said the integration with TSO is a “further endorsement of Intel’s technology.”
Sprunger said Intel like’s TSO’s “proactive approach” to power management.
There is also some monetary benefit for the chip maker since the agreement involves product revenue sharing between TSO and Intel.
The TSO Metrics and TSO Power Control products were released this year. They are now managing some 5,000 servers. The products monitor application activity by accessing data from components like network load balancers and management software. The data it collects is combined with server instrument data.
This way, Rollo said the solutions can accurately determine the cost of running applications in transactions per kilowatt hour.
Animation studio, Arc Productions is one of the companies using TSO’s software.
Prior to the deployment, the firm’s 600 servers consuming roughly 120,000 kWh a month and the company’s utility bills were about $15,000 to $25,000 a month.
Arc could not determine which servers were using the most power and which ones were idle.
With the use of TSO’s software, Arc was able to identify which applications were wasting power and consuming too much power. The company was able to cut its electricity bill by as much as $100,000 a year.