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Pre-Grant Publication Number: 20080028242

Method of remotely controlling the power consumption of one or more servers

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Discussion (4)

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Hazim Andy Todd Han-Tsung Alsaleh Gray Shaffer Min (about 5 years ago)

The proposed patent has several pros and cons associated with it. By creating the ability to have real time updates on servers from a remote location, the controller has a greater ability to adjust the powers supply. This in turn reduces the power that is necessary to run a server farm. In addition, there is less of a need for personnel to be at site monitoring a server farm. Similar to most products that are connected to the internet, there is a potential for many types of security threats that must be addressed. The controller becomes dependent upon the connection, and not having access to the server farm at the correct time could be potentially dangerous. Also, when applying new systems to a current system there will be complexities associated with making it run correctly. Because the reliability is vital to the success of the system, it is important not to make things too complex. Problems that arise within a system become harder to diagnose and solve when the system is complex in its origin. Although it may save time and money associated with the controllers of the server farms, there are added costs to deal with security and connectivity.

In a time where technology is increasing at such an alarming rate, it is important to keep the capabilities of servers on a similar capability as the functions they are supporting. Web based interfaces are becoming a reality for many businesses, and it only makes sense that power control would continue on the same lines. Many companies have increased their dependency upon server farms, such as Google, which has 170,000 servers at 25 locations. The ability to monitor all of these locations at once would be an ability that would greatly increase efficiency of their system. This type of ability creates potential marketability of the patent. Larger organizations with many servers should explore this type of technology and if it could be successfully implemented within their existing systems.

This idea should become an approved patent. The benefits it can provide a company far outweigh the negatives. It is an idea that’s time has come, and should be transitioned easily into the marketplace. It provides a service that will help to counteract the growing need for larger and larger server farms, by increasing the reliability of the system; in turn decreasing the need for redundancy. The problems associated with the patent, such as security threats, already exist within many systems; but in a different manner. The larger organizations that would be using this technology should already be prepared for a multitude of threats, and therefore should be able to handle the potential problems more effectively. This patent will help many organizations in the need of more efficiency and reliability, and should provide positive results in the marketplace.

Manny Schecter (about 5 years ago)

Suggest others consider prior work of Uplogix at http://www.uplogix.com/ - seems to relate to remote power management.

Prithvi Srihari (about 5 years ago)

Given that ACPI is already present and as suggested earlier, SNMP could be used instead of XML messages, it would be needed to know how this application is novel. Also, many companies are offering products that claim to perform the same or similar service.

Joanne Dow (about 5 years ago)

Precisely what distinguishes this application from usual application of the SNMP protocol as embodied in the open source "apcupsd" tool that has been used for about a decade now? I use this application to monitor and issue power down commands to elements of the system of computers here. When running on UPS and the power reserve falls below minimum levels the systems are remotely powered down. There is no huge leap to using this to power down servers which are not in use then powering off their UPS connections.

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