This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop and commercialize an intelligent software power management data center solution. The current default power management can seriously degrade server performance as much as 40% under certain loads. As a result, the default power management is currently not deployed and most servers in the data center are wasting significant energy. The proposed product encourages users to enable the unique power management capabilities to save up to 35% energy under normal load. The approach allows users to set the expected service-level and bound the impact of power management on server performance. For example, users can set a policy of < 10% performance loss and the software will save as much energy as possible without violating the policy.
Data center operators require energy efficient servers in the data center. Data centers in the U.S. and abroad provide the technological backbone for the Internet and e-commerce. As of 2005, data centers accounted for 2% of total U.S. energy consumption. Data center managers cite power consumption as their largest concern today since: 1) energy costs to run servers are now typically greater than acquisition costs; and 2) excessive energy use produces heat that reduces system reliability. If successfully deployed, the proposed approach has the potential to address an emerging market pain point and to make a significant positive economic impact.
SUMMARY DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH FOR THE PHASE II ACTIVITY This SBIR Phase II activity supported the commercialization of Windows power management software. Our patent-pending technologies are designed to reduce energy waste in computer systems without significant loss of performance. Thus, our Granola Enterprise software targets large enterprise deployments and data centers where performance and productivity are critical and IT energy waste accounts for a significant portion of operating costs. Specifically, the plan was to create commercial-grade power management software for use in the enterprise with a focus on support for the MS Windows operating system (XP, Vista, and 7). The technical aspects of this Phase II activity consisted of three major objectives: Design, create, validate, and deploy autonomous software clients (ultimately named "Granola" clients). The goal here was to modify our clients to work effectively in enterprise and data center environments running the Windows operating system. [COMPLETE] Design, create, validate, and deploy a scalable network power management infrastructure. The goal here was to create the infrastructure necessary to enable users to ultimately track and manage the power use of tens of thousands of systems. [COMPLETE] Design, create, validate, and deploy a simple, easy-to-use GUI Interface. The goal here was to create user interfaces that scale well to tens of thousands of systems and are intuitive to the end user. [COMPLETE] Over the course of the Phase II activity, we developed the Granola Enterprise product for Windows platforms. Figure T-1 shows the high-level design of the resulting product. This design entailed developing the Granola clients to support interaction with a back-end infrastructure for scalable tracking and management as well as a GUI interface for its use. To ensure portability, we implemented an API to enable secure, remote interaction with the Windows-based clients and then implemented a system in the cloud that interacts with all the clients. This cloud design is implemented in a product called the "Granola Enterprise Dashboard" and provides access to power data and management from any remote location. This design enabled us to build GUIs in a web browser to interact with the Windows-based Granola clients as well as any other Granola clients running on a variety of platforms such as Linux and VMWare. This cloud-based design solved a number of the technical design challenges of the proposed Phase II activity and serendipitously the Granola Enterprise Dashboard (see Figure T-1) is now a key differentiator in the market – providing a single point power management solution for users that have a diverse collection of servers, PCs, and laptops in their infrastructure. Granola Enterprise is marketed as a free product that enables organizations to measure and track their IT energy footprint. With account creation (available at http://grano.la -- requiring a name and valid email address), users can install the Granola Windows clients on as many machines as they like. They can later access their account online via the Granola Enterprise Dashboard and view the energy usage of their IT infrastructure. The free version of Granola Enterprise only provides usage information in the aggregate – that is, only a summary of power usage is displayed via the Granola Enterprise Dashboard and users cannot "dive down" to identify root causes of energy waste. Many users are satisfied with having an accurate picture of their IT energy use. However, our pay-for products can reduce an organization's energy waste. We designed product add-ons that can be purchased a la carte to enable users to select power management features suitable to their organization. Insight: The Insight add-on option allows people to get fine-grain power usage information down to the single Windows system level (versus the aggregate available in the freeware). This enables users to identify and isolate "culprits" of inefficiency. Power Steering: The Power Steering add-on option allows people to use our patent-pending performance guarantee technology on their Windows-based systems with a fixed (and not truly guaranteed) SLA (service-level agreement) of 10%. This enables users to save energy when their systems are in-use and also tracks energy usage and savings information from power management. Power Steering requires purchase of the Insight option. Power Nap: The Power Nap add-on option allows people to remotely schedule when Windows-based systems are ON, OFF, or in Standby. This option is designed for Windows-based PC networks primarily and saves significant energy by enabling organizations to ensure systems go off at night or when idle for long periods. Power Nap requires purchase of the Insight option. Power Tuning: The Power Tuning add-on option allows people to use the patent-pending performance guarantee technology on their Windows-based systems with a user-set (and guaranteed) SLA. This enables users to save energy when their systems are in-use while guaranteeing performance will act within their SLA setting. This product is primarily designed for server-usage in the data center.
