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Turning Green

IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager 4.1 evolves to offer improved saving and manageability.

In today’s energy-conscious environment, many businesses are realizing benefits of being green beyond those initiated as a means of protecting our natural resources. IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager (AEM) users are saving on energy costs. Additionally, energy-management tools have allowed many businesses to grow in locations previously constrained due to a lack of available power.

Over the past year, AEM has evolved, and is designed to offer better savings in energy costs and an easily managed data center. New POWER6* processor capabilities just became available, and AEM exploits those to the fullest.

What’s New?

AEM 4.1 has a new infrastructure, built on the innovative IBM Systems Director 6.1, which is available with all IBM servers. Systems Director provides a platform on which to serve a broad set of IT equipment- and systems-management functions. AEM 4.1 is a Systems Director 6.1 plugin that expands its capabilities to cover energy management and goes beyond IT equipment.

AEM 4.1 continues to support IBM server monitoring and energy regulation, but the enhanced EnergyScale* capabilities of POWER6 processor-based servers allow even more control than before. AEM 4.1 continues to support pre-POWER6 servers and non-IBM servers by monitoring power distribution units (PDUs), but now expands that function by supporting non-IBM PDUs and sensors. Other non-IBM equipment types, including those that support data-center facilities, are now covered, which dramatically expands the scope of Systems Director and AEM. All of this new functionality improves usability without increasing complexity. The AEM server can run on Power* processor-based systems, Windows*, Linux* and System x* architecture. New in AEM 4.1 is support for running AEM on AIX*.

On POWER6 processor-based servers, a new energy-saving mode, dynamic power savings, automatically adjusts power use based on processor workload.

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