Gracefully Shut Down Your Servers to Save Cooling Dollars

Conserving energy and lowering its usage are two of the most frequently dictated mandates for any Data Center Manager.  There are a number of ways this is accomplished: server decommissioning/consolidation, high density computing, air containment systems, air-side economizers, and so on. One method that’s rarely discussed is the practice of completely shutting down servers during off-peak hours.
 
Shutting down servers is often overlooked as an energy saving practice because when servers are shut down abruptly, data and applications being run on those servers may become corrupted.  But this shouldn’t deter anyone from employing graceful shutdown to power off servers, and here’s why: Studies have shown that by turning off devices when they’re idle or shutting off unused devices completely data centers can save as much as 25% or more on energy.
 
And beyond using graceful shutdown for creating energy savings, it often becomes necessary to power down servers during a power outage or other emergency situation. This is why Sunbird’s DCIM Monitoring solution uses patented technology to verify whether it is safe to shut down the server.  The patent, number 8751847, was issued on June 10, 2014 and is a method and system for detecting whether a computer server has shut down gracefully. 
 
The patent was awarded for Sunbird’s innovative method of verifying whether the level of power consumption of a server at the time it is polled is less than the server-specific level of power consumption during operation.  If this is the case, then the server is considered to have been gracefully shut down, and power to the server is switched off by delivering the appropriate command to the PDU.
 
But what if the level of power consumption of the server at that time is not less than the server-specific level of consumption?  That condition may indicate a malfunction, and so power to the server is maintained so the cause can be determined and remedied.  The end result is that your data does not become unnecessarily corrupted and your servers do not get damaged.
 
Request a demo to learn more about Sunbird’s DCIM Monitoring Solution and how graceful shutdown can help your data center reduce costs and ensure the safety of your servers.