Software Defined Power Transforms Data Center Power Delivery

Virtual Power Systems, creators of Software Defined Power® (SDP), today announced a new release of its Intelligent Control of Energy (ICE®) software application suite with additional capabilities to transform power delivery in data center and cloud environments.

ICE is a software-based power control platform that intelligently and dynamically distributes and manages power in data centers with constant awareness of power consumption needs across the entire topology. Utilizing machine learning and predictive analytics to unlock trapped and underutilized power, this innovative solution drives aggressive vertical and rack-powered density, enabling 2:1 rack consolidation.

The ability to halt rack sprawl through consolidation while increasing power density can slash annual costs of a production IT rack by more than half, while driving increased capacity and revenue for data center operators.

"While IT operators have come to rely on the many benefits of virtualization when it comes to servers, storage and networking in data centers, these technologies haven't been extended to the foundation of all data center equipment power," said Steve Houck, CEO of VPS. "VPS' ICE provides data centers with the ability to embed intelligent visibility and control automation, instantly unlocking previously unusable power capacity for major operational and bottom-line benefits."

ICE can monitor and orchestrate power consumption of thousands of SDP-compatible devices within the data center while leveraging machine learning algorithms to predict short-term changes and identify stranded capacity based on historical usage patterns. As a result, ICE policies sent to hardware devices can dictate power consumption or delivery within milliseconds for dramatic improvements in IT workload scheduling and orchestration.

"The evolution of ICE provides operators with capabilities that until now required expensive, redundant, power-intensive hardware devices," said Karimulla Shaikh, CTO of VPS. "This latest release of ICE provides many additional capabilities, bringing the full potential of Software Defined Power to the modern data center and positions VPS for even deeper integration into the data center ecosystem."

• ICE's new algorithms now leverage the combined potential of power control devices and local energy sources, enabling newly provisioned racks to operate even under utility failure conditions-buying data center operators enough time to make decisions and adjust workloads.
• ICE Software now works with data-center power hardware using intelligent policies that enable devices to gracefully operate the facility even in the case of a communication failure, giving data center operators the comfort that policies stay intact even with loss of communication.
• ICE's Power Availability API shares the intelligence of ICE Software with existing workload orchestration software in data centers to enable power-optimized provisioning of workloads. A VM orchestration module through integration with vSphere is in development and slated for release within a quarter.

VPS is collaborating with a growing ecosystem of industry power equipment leaders who have developed commercially available hardware appliances based on VPS' patented reference architecture.

Schneider Electric and CUI, two early partners, licensed VPS' technology and are demonstrating the significant efficiency benefits of SDP to their customers. Growing market momentum enables data center and cloud operators to take advantage of unique functionality, including:

• RackShare: VPS peak-shaving algorithm that orchestrates the distribution of energy across multiple local storages to mitigate buffers and protect upstream power constraints.
• Dynamic Redundancy: Active algorithms that allow tapping into redundant capacity without affecting the availability of existing racks by monitoring power availability and switching the flow of power accordingly.

VPS' ICE software also enables dynamic power tiering, source sharing of power and power sharing across nodes.

"With automatic and real-time insights into data center operations, ICE automates and often eliminates manual and skill-intensive activities while improving operational reliability and flexibility," Houck added. "VPS is gaining rapid momentum by empowering our partners and customers with the ability to fully realize the potential of SDP."

The ICE software application suite is available now. Existing pilot projects reveal that SDP and ICE can more than double IT workloads and revenue potential while dramatically reducing power-related infrastructure costs.