Manage Power Directly From Any Major Virtualization Platform

The latest systems integrate closely with leading virtualization platforms to significantly ease the complexities of keeping critical applications continuously available. This integration enables technicians to monitor and administer not only physical and virtual servers but UPSes and other power devices through a single interface. It also records all power events in the same place network events are logged, allowing users to access all system notifications in one convenient location.

The latest and most sophisticated power protection solutions support the remote shutdown virtual machines (VMs), as well as hosts, without the installation of any shutdown agents. These power management systems can be configured on the virtualization management server to shut down both physical and virtual servers in predefined sequences that minimize exposure to data loss.

Virtualization software vendors offer “live migration” products. However, none of those systems include built-in functionality for responding to power outages. Sophisticated power management solutions are equipped to automate the migration of VMs into the public portion of a hybrid cloud automatically during power failures, using similar tools and processes they employ when moving virtual servers onto in-house servers.

With virtualization, each enclosure is more power-hungry than ever, while the average server CPU runs at about 70 to 80 percent power consumption. To avoid a potentially dangerous power system overload when restoring IT systems following downtime, users can employ the intelligent control of load segments provided by the latest power management software to resurrect the data center, section by section, to avoid hardware damage.

Based on early notification of power loss to the primary site, users can utilize modern power management software to have a backup site ready before the primary site crashes, keeping data secure at all times. As long as sufficient battery runtime is available, the software can then initiate the data synchronization and startup of a backup site without data loss.

By using modern power management systems, IT managers can proactively prioritize VMs to ensure that the most critical VMs are restarted at the recovery site on backup battery. This recovery plan can be customized to respond specifically to different events, including utility failure, redundancy loss and virtual power source loss.

Today’s power management systems and intelligent power distribution products communicate to meter energy consumption down to the individual device level. This enables IT managers not only to control individual power outlets or groups of outlets across the network, but also to track and reduce the power consumption of protected servers and other IT equipment.

Modern power protection systems enable users to create scripts that automatically respond to specific alarms in a predefined manner. Companies can use such scripts to augment their power protection systems’ built-in functionality in sophisticated ways. For example, technicians could extend UPS battery runtime by creating a script that automatically shuts down noncritical VMs early in a power outage and then consolidates the remaining VMs onto a smaller number of host servers.

In the event of an extended outage, business continuity and disaster recovery processes rely on sufficient UPS battery capacity to protect data and critical hardware. IT managers can bolster a virtualization platform’s inherent migration capabilities by installing an integrated power management software solution that automatically consolidates VMs and safely shuts down idle servers to extend backup battery life.

By downloading, installing and customizing open-source device drivers distributed via Websites such as Network UPS Tools, data center managers can equip their infrastructure to shut down servers in the proper order when utility/server power becomes unavailable. This solution offers an easy, yet extremely powerful and highly configurable, power management option to organizations that use and customize Linux or other open-source solutions.