October 7, 2009
Following up on the topic of Power Virtualization, “virtualizing” power has multiple benefits, especially if you are running more than one data center.
By spreading the load among various sites, power virtualization allows you the flexibility to move computing on the fly. In response to an outage, for example, the processing capacity can be moved to other sites automatically, where the additional load can be absorbed while the outage is being repaired. This increases your overall data center reliability by giving you more automated disaster recovery services – in addition to the standard use of re-routing and mirrored data centers.
However, there are many advantages of being able to move compute resources quickly to wherever needed. Power Assure allows you to make use of variables other than service availability upon which to base the decision to move processing to a different location.
Take price, for example. The amount you pay for power varies by time of day, by season, and by location. If you are running a data center in midtown Manhattan during the peak demand hours of 10AM-2PM, the price you pay could be many times what you would pay in North Dakota at the same time. By turning on price as a variable in load-shifting, Power Assure can instantly move your primary data processing from Manhattan to North Dakota (or wherever you want it to go) while prices are high, allowing you to save, literally, millions in annual power costs. The servers in Manhattan would remain in the pool waiting to be turned on if needed to respond to an outage at another center, or a spike in demand that exceeds the combined capacity of your other centers. And when the day is done the Manhattan servers are turned back on and can then take on capacity from another data center where costs may be higher later in the day. And if latency is a concern, you can set limits, e.g. no shifting during trading hours.
Yet another variable is Demand Response (DR). Many companies are signing up with providers like Enernoc, Comverge or CPowered in order to take advantage of the millions of dollars utilities are willing to pay if your company can reduce power at a specific site very quickly. The way it works is quite simple. The utility sends a message asking for power reduction; if the site can support it, Power Assure automatically shifts the load to other sites, temporarily reducing power consumption at the DR request site. Once the DR period expires, Power Assure can transfer the load back. Without any sacrifice in service quality, you sit back, let the software do its work and wait for your rebate check.
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