Benefits of a virtualized power management strategy

Virtualization and power management: Power monitoring and management are complex and essential to maintaining continuous uptime at engineering facilities. A virtualization management system and a specialized power monitoring and management solution can help.

By Arthur Mulligan and Jim Tessier April 3, 2016

In today’s virtualized industrial landscape, more services are running on less hardware, which means that ensuring those services stay up and running is more vital than ever. Generally speaking, no one solution offers all the features needed to keep critical power components and backup devices operating at peak efficiency. Ensuring uptime of critical power systems requires combining virtualization management technology with a strategic power management strategy.

Deploying the right power management and monitoring solutions can help expand the capabilities of a virtual platform while also creating a cohesive, maximized asset. Implementing a virtualized power management strategy offers key benefits and opportunities.

Integration, virtualization

Major virtualization platforms enable users to view and control many physical and virtual machines while adding power management capabilities. Many of today’s power management solutions can seamlessly integrate with virtualization management technology, enabling users to administer backup power and power distribution assets, which include uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) and power distribution units (PDUs), in sophisticated ways on one virtual management console. 

Better command, control

Virtualization management solutions allow technicians to extend UPS battery life during utility outages by shutting down virtual machines and consolidating them onto fewer host devices. "Live migration" programs also let data centers move virtual machines from host servers running on battery power to unaffected servers elsewhere on the network or in a co-location data center in the cloud. No other type of information technology (IT) and facilities management solution can perform these types of critical functions. 

Real-time remote monitoring

In a perfect world, someone would be able to monitor system IT infrastructure equipment constantly, ensuring critical applications are continuously powered and running efficiently. But that’s not realistic, as teams have more to tend to than just the IT environment. That’s where a comprehensive monitoring and management platform can make a big difference, helping to act as a second set of eyes on vital equipment. 

More uptime

Power monitoring and management are complex tasks, but they are essential to maintaining continuous uptime at engineering facilities. To perform these tasks effectively, a virtualization management system, along with a specialized power monitoring and management solution, are needed. Operators seeking to prevent utility outages and power system malfunctions from disabling mission-critical IT applications should ensure they have the right set of onsite technologies and remote monitoring services for their environment.

Arthur Mulligan is a Raleigh-based product line manager for Eaton’s U.S. power quality service organization. Jim Tessier is an Eaton product manager for IT hardware and software products. Edited by Mark T. Hoske, content manager, CFE Media, Control Engineering, mhoske@cfemedia.com.

MORE ADVICE

Key concepts

Virtualization and power management strategies can be integrated.

For greater uptime, live migration can move virtual machines to unaffected areas on the network or to the cloud. 

Consider this

Why not integrate power management with virtualization efforts?

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Arthur Mulligan is a Raleigh-based product line manager for Eaton’s U.S. power quality service organization and has celebrated more than 15 years with Eaton. He has a varied background of marketing, advertising, and sales experience in telecom, software, and professional services.

Jim Tessier is a product manager for IT hardware and software products and has been with Eaton for 8 years. He introduced and grew the Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) software product from a simple power management platform to an award-winning data center power management software that integrates within the IT environment and offers controls to optimize data center power solutions.