Software Makes Data Centers Greener

PORTLAND, Ore. — Data centers can go green without installing hardware, according to Sentilla Corp. (Redwood City, Calif.), which announced a meter-free monitoring capability at Data Center World in Nashville. Sentilla Energy Manager reports how much energy is being used and how much carbon is being produced by each device, letting IT optimize the data center for both the lowest energy use and the smallest carbon footprint. The software employs an AI inference engine to monitor power consumption without adding hardware on unmetered equipment. "Basically the inference engine is able to estimate the power utilization of unmetered equipment by finding out what type of device it is and how much work it is doing," said Sentilla chief executive officer Bob Davis. A Web-based dashboard shows managers exactly where energy is being wasted, allowing idle devices, for instance, to be turned off when not in use. Sentilla claims Energy Manager enables up to a 40 percent savings in energy consumed. Energy Manager 3.0 also adds reporting capabilities that allow energy consumption to be calculated by department, allowing chargeback reports to hold an enterprise's various lines of business responsible for the associated cost of the energy they use in the corporate data center.