A new energy management tool for the server room and datacenter

With its unveiling of its Nightwatchman Server Edition on Tuesday night, 1e took one more step to extending its success in power management into the datacenter. Nightwatchman Server Edition is describes as “the first power and efficiency management solution to analyze whether servers are providing Useful Work and deliver actionable data that allows IT administrators to ensure that data centers are as efficient as they can be, reducing infrastructure and spending” (Source: Server Energy Efficiency Report”).

Last night I went to the Nightwatchman Server Edition Launch party, staged by 1e, a power and patch management software solution provider. There were approximately 40 people comprised of 1e’s customers, suppliers and partners at the low-key, intimate event held at the Russell Hotel in London. 1e, with offices in London and New York and headed up by CEO Sumir Karayi, was founded in 1997 with $1500 of Series A funding. 1e’s Nightwatchman PC Power and Patch Management solution has proved popular with customers like AT&T, Dell, HSBC, British Airways, Microsoft and others. 1e’s list of blue chip clients, crisp, clear messages and high visibility means that it is more well-known that its closet rival Verdiem and their Surveyor PC power management product. It has decided to build on the success of the original Nightwatchman and hopes to extend its power management success to the datacenter arena.

Nightwatchman Server Edition is intended to address the Datacenter Manager’s challenges around energy efficiency and power. At a time when many datacenters are running out of space and power, and when organisations are looking to IT to reduce its own carbon and cost footprint and drive efficiencies across the rest of the business, it has become even more important for Datacenter Managers to understand the power consumption profile of their server estate.

The conventional response to space and energy constraints in the datacenter has been to recommend consolidation and virtualisation of the server estate. However in many cases customers 1) can’t afford the initial and ongoing investment virtualisation requires 2) have already consolidated and virtualised their estates and are STILL running out of space and power 3) simply have no idea where to start because they don’t know which servers are actually doing useful work. This is where Nightwatchman Server Edition fits in. It claims to identify, measure and report on the energy usage profile of each application on each server, information that Datacenter Managers can use to aid their decisions about 1) what applications can be consolidated onto single servers 2) which servers can be decommissioned or reallocated 3) enabling power management features on servers that are doing useful work.

Organisations can expect to achieve 15% or more reduction in server power consumption. According to 1e, “By power managing unproductive servers and freeing up unused capacity, an organization with 1,000 servers can save close to a million dollars per year. The power savings alone are equivalent to the amount of CO2 absorbed by 151,000 trees each year.”

I certainly enjoyed the launch event and it was great to speak with 1e customers who are trialling some of their power management software. (I have a newly discovered respect for one particular pharmaceutical company after hearing about how they utilise IT in a very strategic way inside their organisation). Nightwatchman Server Edition's clever reporting and grouping features which displays energy usage easily alongside CO2 emissions, could make the potential for chargeback of datacenter servers more of a reality and will, I suspect, appeal to organisations trying to drive accountability around energy usage.

I think we'll definitely see and hear more about Nightwatchman Server Edition as it hits the market. Perhaps I'll even write a blog post about how I think it fits in with other software power management solution, and hardware power management solutions like Raritan's Intelligent PDUs.

I’m sure the techie types at Computacenter can’t wait to get their hands on this newest invention so they can play with it!