SOMERSET, N.J., (November 24, 2008) - Raritan today announced that its Dominion® PX intelligent power distribution units (PDUs) support IBM® Systems Director Active Energy Manager (AEM) V4.1.

A key component of the IBM Cool Blue™ portfolio within Project Big Green, IBM Active Energy Manager provides clients with a view of the actual power used, as opposed to benchmarked power consumption, and can effectively allocate, match and cap power and thermal limits in the data center—at the system, chassis or rack level.  To help customers monitor data center power usage, AEM uses autonomic capabilities to track energy consumption across multiple platforms.

The new release of AEM energy management software, available starting today, provides a number of new features—including power-trending support for older systems, low- and mid-range storage devices and non-IBM systems through the use of intelligent power distribution units.  By plugging systems into a supported intelligent PDU—such as IBM’s or Raritan’s Dominion PX PDUs—AEM is able to collect power information for each device, thereby presenting a more complete view of energy usage within the data center.

Raritan’s intelligent PDU gathers detailed, outlet-level metering information on servers and other equipment plugged into its power strip.  With built-in intelligence, connectivity and security technologies, Raritan’s Dominion PX PDU can determine the actual power usage of individual servers, a rack’s capacity and environmental information, such as temperature and humidity at the rack.  It also can be used to power sequence IT equipment from anywhere.

By having accurate, detailed information on power usage, IT and facility managers are able to manage data center workloads for optimal energy efficiency.  Customers, for example, can migrate workloads to eliminate hot spots, or move work off underutilized systems to conserve energy.  AEM is enabling IBM’s own data centers to experiment in moving workloads from one data center to another in order to chase the sun and take advantage of lower utility rates offered at night time in certain parts of the world.

“We are pleased to support IBM’s Systems Director Active Energy Manager,” said Herman Chan, Raritan’s Power Management Solutions business unit leader.  “Detailed power information is helping customers solve a host of energy-related issues in their data centers.  Information generated by intelligent PDUs can help identify energy-wasting, poor-performing servers.  They can discover underutilized servers as candidates to virtualize.  They can, even, find problem hot spots and excessive cooling at the rack, and circuit loads that are about to trip breakers.  They also can help locate racks with available power capacity to add more IT equipment.  Our goal is to help customers reduce energy costs and carbon emissions and improve data center operations.”

About Raritan (Raritan.com)
Raritan is a leading provider of intelligent power management and secure IT infrastructure management solutions that provide IT directors, managers and administrators the control they need to optimize data center productivity and enhance branch office operations.  In more than 50,000 locations around the world, our power management and integrated secure in-band and out-of-band server access-and-control products help companies better monitor and manage energy consumption and server access and utilization.  Raritan’s OEM division provides advanced embedded hardware and firmware for server and client management including KVM-over-IP, IPMI, intelligent power management and other industry standards-based management applications.  Based in Somerset, N.J., Raritan has 38 offices worldwide, serving 76 countries. For more information, please visit Raritan.com

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