Accenture Case Study

Power Assure Demonstrates Power Modeling and Management Capabilities for Accenture Technology Labs

Today data center operators assess power needs using the server power labels on the back or bottom of the box. Starting with the labels, the operator then takes 75-80% of “rated” power to determine the “actual” power draw for each server. Some companies measure actual draw off the power strip after equipment is installed. However, these measurements are often one-time readings and are not integrated with overall data center performance metrics, such as IT and cooling load. Power Assure offers a better option. As illustrated in the Accenture Technology Labs study, Power Assure reduces power consumption by 68% in a 25% loaded farm by using precise measurements, continuous monitoring, and active power management.

Energy Efficient Data Center Project

Sun Microsystems hosted demonstrations of Power Assure's power management solutions as part of the Silicon Valley Leadership Chill-Off. Using Sun's 8 racks and 320 ‘end-of-life’ servers, the team used Power Assure's software to drive the servers and racks to specific load levels and to demonstrate power management capability. Working with Underwriter's Laboratories (UL), who certifies energy efficiency, Power Assure demonstrated the actual dollar value of accurate power modeling and active power management.

Power Assure Achieves Significant Savings in Power

Power Assure measured power consumption from multiple vendors and found a typical error of plus or minus 20% using online calculators, and as much as 100% using ratings on the back plate power labels. The results demonstrate that power labels or vendor information are not reliable for determining actual power draw at Off, Idle, or loaded states. To determine precisely the power draw for real capacity planning, and to improve energy efficiency, companies need accurate measurements.

When Power Assure characterized the power consumption of Sun servers comparing the older V20 server with the T2000, it showed a 268% improvement in performance in five years with the same wattage.

Using a typical load balanced environment, Power Assure measured rack power consumption for a server farm running 32 servers at 25% load and compared it to a dynamically calibrated server farm that runs 8 servers at 100% for the same amount of transactions per second. Results showed energy savings of 68% by increasing the load on 8 servers and shedding load from the remaining 24 servers so that they were completely turned off (compared to keeping all 32 servers on with an average load of 25%). These savings had no impact to service availability or transaction throughput. Using the automated mechanism from Power Assure simplified the adjustments significantly since it automatically set servers to various load levels and added and removed servers as needed without impacting service levels.