Marty Stephens of LexisNexis on Managing Data Center Energy with Viridity Software

Today, Michael Rowan, CTO & Co-Founder of Viridity Software, and Marty Stephens, Director of Information Technology of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, discussed how Viridity EnergyCenter software helped LexisNexis Risk Solutions improve energy efficiency and lowered their power bill.

Marty, who manages Critical Infrastructure for the LexisNexis RAIG Alpharetta Data Center, currently has a Tier III+ data center with plans to become a Tier IV data center by the end of 2010. His data center supports an annual revenue stream of over a billion dollars. Prior to using Viridity EnergyCenter software, LexisNexis Risk Solutions was able to cut $1 million by getting rid of useless servers in their data center – but that was by putting a team on project managers working extra hours on the project. “We could have done the whole project with the push of a button if we had started with Viridity EnergyCenter.” Marty went on to say that he can take the information he gets from using Viridity EnergyCenter in his data center, directly to other IT managers, Facility managers, and C-level executives to justify the immediate ROI of the software when he shows the power savings gained with a more efficiently run data center. “Every dollar saved in the data center is a dollar in the bank for my company,” he says.

Protecting Your Data Center from Brownouts with Viridity EnergyCenter

A heat wave is a prolonged period of excessively hot weather that often comes with high humidity.  A very persistent heat wave, like the one we're having in the Northeast this week, can cause widespread power outages due to electricity spikes due to increased air conditioning use, which can lead to power outages.

If you're managing a data center, then you know that computer systems and other electronic storage devices are susceptible to data loss or hardware damage that can be caused by the sudden loss of power.

Protection from Brownouts 

Running Viridity EnergyCenter in preparation a brownout will help you know how much power the equipment in your data center is actually consuming. With this information, you can determine the actual power requirements that need be protected by the uninterruptible power system (UPS).  You can use this information to:

• Inventory data center assets including servers, power distribution units (PDUs), branch circuit monitors (BCMs) so that you know what you need to protect.
• Identify best placement for equipment. Efficiently place hardware based on rack space, rack power capacity, and server dimensions so that nothing overheats.
• Track top power consumers.  Know which equipment is consuming the most power so that you ensure that there is enough power to run them. 
• Determine how much battery runtime you need. During an outage, you'll need enough battery runtime to shut down systems or switch to backup generators.

With advanced planning and energy resource management software, you can reduce costs and downtime while resolving the most common threats to IT systems due to brownouts.

Discover What's In Your Data Center In < 2 Minutes

The first step towards optimizing your data center to be more energy efficient is to discover what is actually in it.  With Viridity EnergyCenter, you can view a data center inventory of assets including servers, power distribution units (PDUs), branch circuit monitors (BCMs), and more. Then, filter system types by data center, rack row, or IP address range. This video demonstrates how you can begin data center management in less than two minutes.

Once you've discovered all of the assets in this data center, you can then discover the data center power draw, events triggering jobs, the average server utilization, and the number of underutilized servers within hours.  Viridity Energy Center provides you with actionable information that results in major cost reductions while increasing your overall data center energy efficiency.

To learn more, join us on one of our upcoming live webinars where Viridity co-founder and CTO, Michael Rowan, will drill down on data center energy optimization issues, demo Viridity EnergyCenter, and answer any questions you have.

Meet the Author of "The Green and Virtual Data Center"

Industry veteran Greg Schulz has written a great book called The Green and Virtual Data Center and we liked it so much, we invited him to do a webinar with us in July. (Stay tuned for details.)

Greg explains how data centers can use many of the technologies that exist now that allow  a green and efficient virtual data center to support and sustain business growth with reasonable return on investment.

Throughout the book, Greg offers his real-world insight in addressing best practices, server, software, storage, networking, and facilities issues concerning any current or next-generation virtual data centers. This book covers:

• Energy as well as data footprint reduction
• Cloud-based storage and computing
• Intelligent and adaptive power management
• Server, storage, and networking virtualization
• Tiered servers; storage, network, and data centers
• Energy avoidance and energy efficiency

We hope you can join Greg Schulz and Michael Rowan, Viridity Software's co-founder and CTO for the webinar.  We'll be giving away copies of The Green and Virtual Data Center to two attendees.  The live webinar will include a presentation by Greg, a demo of Viridity EnergyCenter by Mike, and will be open for Q&A afterwards.

>> Register for Webinar

About the Book:

• Hardcover: 396 pages (coming soon to the Amazon Kindle)
• Publisher: CRC/Auerbach Publications; January 26, 2009
• Language: English (but soon to be out in Chinese)

Top Ten Reasons to Use Energy Resource Management Software

Free Data Center Efficiency eBooks: Search DataCenter, Uptime Institute, Realtime Publishing

We’ve got more content to share with visitors to the Viridity site.  There is a new eBook section under Resources that includes three eBooks from RealTime Publishing, a SearchDataCenter Pocket E-Guide, and a recent booklet created for the Uptime Institite.  Take a look.

Realtime Publishing: The Business Drivers for Energy-Efficient Data Centers

What are the business drivers for energy-efficient data centers? Cost is obviously an important factor, but it’s actually a multi-pronged concern. Are you concerned about the costs of cooling your data center, or the costs of powering it? What about the costs associated with individual servers? You may also be concerned with data center capacity: Do you have the power and cooling to add new servers and provide new business services? Can some older, less-efficient servers be retired early for a cost savings? In this article, technology author Don Jones explores the thinking behind today’s business decisions on data center energy efficiency.

Realtime Publishing: Finding Inefficient Servers and Reducing Data Center Costs


Do you know the “Efficiency Score” for your servers? It’s a measurement of how much power and cooling they consume compared to the utilization of the server itself. Servers with a low score are consuming a lot of money and providing relatively little value, and those servers are prime candidates for early retirement, consolidation, or a refresh to a more-efficient, newer hardware platform. Reducing data center costs starts and the server level, and author Don Jones shows you how to find the lowest-hanging fruit quickly and easily.

Realtime Publishing: Maximizing Data Center Density by Finding Power and Cooling Capacity You Didn’t Know You Had


Does your business need new servers to provide new capabilities – but you don’t think your data center can handle any more power and cooling? You might be surprised. Simply adding up the wattage on your server power supplies isn’t an accurate estimate of actual utilization, and you may have more data center capacity than you realize. Let author Don Jones show you how to save money by finding – and utilizing – capacity you’re already paying for.

SearchDataCenter.com Pocket E-Guide: An Expert Guide to Data Center Trends, Energy Regulations, and More

In light of the current economic condition, data center managers’ plans and budgets must be extremely flexible.  This expert Pocket E-Guide, brought to you by SearchDataCenter.com and Viridity, discusses the top trends for the data center in 2010.  Explore a group of data center energy efficiency standards that are currently being developed  by the federal government and other major industry groups.  Discover why it is critical for facilities and finance groups to work together for the approval of data center project initiatives.

Uptime Institute Underwriter Case Study:  Measuring Power Consumption and Equipment Utilization for Greater Data Center Efficiency

Lack of available power along with the energy expenses associated with IT equipment and cooling infrastructure have heightened the requirement for data center energy efficiency initiatives.  Until now, it’s been difficult to successfully improve energy usage and gain visibility in the data center because of the cost and complexity involved in measuring equipment power consumption and utilization.

Wikipedia Back Up After Server Meltdown

“Wikipedia back up after server meltdown” – outage Wednesday, March 23 at 2:45 pm (ET) at Wikipedia’s European Data Center….

At Viridity Software, we talk to data center managers, IT directors, facilities’ management, and industry consultants all the time.  We often share our favorite “war stories”.  Like  the one about the huge financial services company that bought over $25M (yes, million) of high-end storage and took delivery only to find out that they didn’t have enough electricity to power (or cool) the equipment.  Or most recently, an industry consultant shared his story with us about a client who experienced a data center outage across the entire facility after tripping a power distribution unit (PDU) that resulted in a cascading event simply due to not having enough available power for multiple PDUs to be in charge mode at the same time.   The list of war stories is long, but somehow you always think it cannot happen to you.

Well, apparently Wikipedia found out on March 23rd that it could happen to you.  I am sure that Wikipedia is using state-of-the-art everything in their data center to deliver their world-class website and service. But, the fact that they did have an “overheating” situation that led to a server shut down and then to failed failover (yes, a failover that didn’t work) is both unfortunate and mind-boggling.

Lets face it…the current state of IT is to react to issues versus proactively manage which results in situations like this one.  To IT’s defense, vendors are chronically pushing solutions on them that may or may not pay off, are complex to deploy, and are typically very costly.

Further, it is amazing that basic IT tools to help better understand power consumption and cooling are generally not available.  As a result, most IT pros will admit that they have no idea about consumption, hot spots, or available capacity in a given rack. 

Don’t let what happened to Wikipedia happen to you.If you are being asked (or mandated) to understand your power consumption down to the server or device, take a look at Viridity EnergyCenter software.  It installs in minutes and within an hour or two after launching your initial discovery, you will be amazed at the information you get back that can help your data center be more efficient right away.

-- Steve Keilen, VP of Marketing, Viridity Software

Take the Guess Work out of Data Center Energy Management

At Viridity, one of the things we frequently tell data center managers interested in a more efficienct data center is to start gathering information that can help them make informed decisions.  Gathering the facts can be a time consuming task, but doing so means you can reap huge rewards when it comes time to take on the next big consolidation, tech refresh, or asset growth project.  Taking the guess work out of this process can make or break your time and expense budgets.



Before Viridity EnergyCenter software, there were a number of disparate tools at your disposal for aggregating this information:  spreadsheets, layout tools, and protocol monitoring.  If you're using these today, the good news is you’re ahead of the curve.  What you've probably realized though is that over time keeping these tools up to date when you’re planning the next big project, is a huge task.  If that’s not enough, we frequently hear from administrators who've invested the time to get the raw data because they are overwhelmed with the amount of information and don’t know how to pull from their efforts.



One of the great things about working at Viridity is I work on a solution that solves all of these issues that we are all too familiar with.  I started my career working in the data center and I experienced first hand both the uncertainty of not having the information to make informed decisions and the paralysis that can occur with too much information in vast and in varied formats.  I can still remember hearing the Viridity pitch for the first time and thinking "Why is nobody else doing this?"



Viridity EnergyCenter goes beyond automating the process of keeping your data center information up to date.  In about 15 minutes, you can discover your networked equipment and can start polling for power consumption and utilization information.  This feature alone usually gets people interested, but it's really not about the information, it's about making it actionable.  The information gained helps make the energy efficiency case, but it's getting the answers to your questions that makes your data center energy efficient. 

•    Is there enough power provisioned to add new equipment?
•    Would the cost of a tech refresh be offset by operation cost?
•    What equipment is doing useful work and which are candidates to be consolidated or removed?

EnergyCenter uses the information gained from looking at the power consumption and utilization of your equipment and augments it with information we've gathered over time to give you the answers to these questions.



The first step will always be getting as much useful information as possible.  Whether you're ready to invest in data management software or not it's what is going to drive your future projects and maintenance.  Our mission is to let customers focus on execution by providing proven answers to previously difficult problems.  Be sure to check out the products page to see how we can help you.  We're always focused on providing the features important to our customers, if you have a suggestion, we'd love to hear.

Matt Bailey, Software Engineer