IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager for x86, V4.1

IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager™ V4.1 (AEM) software, an extension of IBM® Systems Director, is available on Linux® on Power, Linux on System x™, Linux on System z®, AIX®, and Windows® operating systems to help you monitor and manage the power and thermal usage of your IT environment.
AEM is an energy management software tool that can help provide a single view of the actual power usage across systems in your infrastructure as opposed to the benchmarked power consumption. Planned availability date is december 12th 2008.

The new features in this release are: Web-based user interface requiring only a browser, Soft power capping, Energy thresholding, Group capping, Integration with Emerson-Liebert's SiteScan management application (the SiteScan application is supported by Emerson Network Power), Additional power savings modes, Command-line interface support, Select non-IBM PDU support

AEM V4.1 is available as a Web download and includes AEM's monitoring and management functions. AEM's monitoring functions are available for no charge, and the AEM management functions are enabled for a 60-day evaluation period.

Overview

IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager (AEM) 4.1 can effectively help allocate, match, and cap power and thermal limits in the data center at the system, chassis, or rack level. By enabling these energy management technologies, you can effectively manage your systems while potentially improving your cost of computing.

AEM is positioned as a key component of IBM's energy-efficient technologies and services, which are part of IBM's Project Big Green that began May 2007. It is also part of the New Enterprise Data Center strategy and is delivered as part of IBM Systems Director. Active Energy Manager measures, monitors, and manages the energy management components built into IBM servers and provides a cross-platform management solution. It also provides a source of energy management data that can be exploited by Tivoli® enterprise solutions (for example, IBM Tivoli Monitoring). Active Energy Manager also retrieves temperature and power information via wireless sensors (SynapSense) and collects alerts, events, and data from certain facility providers related to power and cooling equipment.

AEM V4.1 builds upon AEM V3.1.1 and offers additional facility provider support for monitoring environmental data from facility providers such as SynapSense and Emerson Network Power. In addition, AEM V4.1 supports select non-IBM PDUs and UPSs as documented in the product library.

Additional features and enhancements to AEM V4.1 include:

Web-based user interface requiring only a browser, eliminating the need to install a client.
Soft power capping (an option within power capping): Ability to set a lower energy cap value to help enable clients to save energy.
Energy thresholding. Users can set a power or temperature threshold and be notified when it is reached (or allow an action to automatically be taken).
Group capping, which allows you to set a power cap for a group of servers (such as all the servers in a rack).
Alerts and monitoring. Additional power events will be monitored and alerts surfaced to help enable corrective action that may be taken by the operator.
Additional support for the newest IBM server models.
Altitude input. You can enter an altitude, which AEM will pass to the IBM servers so that it can be used to help adjust fan speed.
Additional power savings modes. You can set the power savings mode to maximum performance or maximum power savings to help provide for greater control on performance/energy trade-offs.
CLI support. Data from servers and all energy controls is available via command-line interfaces (CLI) so it can be scripted and actions my be taken by the operator.
Translation into nine languages in addition to English.

Description

The Active Energy Manager product has been enhanced with the following functions:

AEM has been restructured as a Web-based application that runs on IBM Systems Director V6.1. Instead of requiring a console client to be installed prior to using its functions, only a Web browser is required.
The energy management functions of this product are now more integrated with other functions of IBM Systems Director to give users a more seamless view of managing their environment.
All resources that are discovered and managed by AEM are now available as IBM Systems Director managed resources, allowing other functions to be available to them. For example, they can all be viewed in the IBM Systems Director Resource Navigator, can be viewed in a topology diagram, and can have their properties shown in the properties views.
Energy management functions have also been added to IBM Systems Director functions, such as thresholding, the Automation Manager, the Live Data view, the thumbnail views of system statistics, and health summaries.
Since the AEM server can now run on AIX, AEM can run on all of the same platforms as the IBM Systems Director V6.1 server.
Translation into all the same languages as IBM Systems Director V6.1 is another part of this integration.

In addition, a number of new and improved energy management functions are now available. These include:

Support for new power savings modes
Previous releases of AEM only allowed the setting of a single static power savings mode. AEM V4.1 provides the new Dynamic power savings mode: Hardware/firmware adjust power usage based on workload. Within this mode, users can choose whether they want to optimize for low power for performance.
Support for additional PDUs
In previous releases, AEM supported the monitoring of power and temperature from IBM PDU+ units. In AEM V4.1, several non-IBM pieces of power equipment can also be monitored. For the complete list and model numbers supported, refer to the AEM home page. Manufacturers include:
- Raritan
- Eaton

Integration with facility equipment
In AEM 3.1.1, support was added to interface with Emerson Network Power's SiteScan application, which allowed AEM to receive events and alerts related to power and cooling equipment. In AEM V4.1, the interface to SiteScan can also be used to collect power, temperature, and other equipment-specific data from non-IT hardware, such as air conditioning units, chillers, UPSs, and PDUs. This will allow AEM users to get a more complete view of an entire data center. This equipment will also be visible within the IBM Systems Director resource navigator, where properties can be displayed. This is the next step in integration between IT administration and facilities administration. For the complete list and model numbers supported, refer to the AEM home page.
Integration with sensors
In AEM 3.1.1, support was added to be able to monitor power and temperature from SynapSense wireless sensors. In AEM V4.1, additional sensor data will be collected, including humidity. These are metrics that can be used to aid in the efficiency of data centers, and could be used to help run fans in equipment at the optimum speed. In addition, users will be able to associate sensor data with other equipment. For example, a user could assign a temperature sensor to the input of a server to help monitor.
Command line interface
In this release, virtually all functions that can be done in the user interface can also be done via a command line interface. This allows these functions to be used in scripts, which is essential to how systems management is done by many customers.
Group capping
This function allows a user to set a power cap for a group of systems (such as all the systems in a rack). AEM will then adjust the power caps of the individual systems in the group in order to meet that group power cap setting. For example, if a user has 10 systems in a rack, and wants to set a group cap of 4,000 watts, then AEM may set a power cap of 400 watts for each server. If there are different types of servers in the group, then the appropriate caps will be set to keep the group cap value.
Altitude input
The fans on servers are one of the components that use a significant amount of power. Anything than can be done to slow them down, when possible, can save energy. AEM V4.1 allows users to input an altitude value for their data center. AEM then passes this information to servers that are properly enabled so they can use this information to help optimize fan speeds. If AEM is able to get altitude information from other sensors in the data center, then that information will be used.