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Power Relationships

AEM controls power flow and cooling distribution

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Figure 1 - Configure Metering Device

Figure 2 - Power Perspective

Figure 3 - Relationship View

Figure 4 - All Perspective

Figure 5 - Resource Table

Figure 6 - Propagated Events

Active Energy Manager (AEM)–an IBM Systems Director plugin for monitoring and managing data center power and environmental conditions–can monitor a variety of IT equipment such as BladeCenters, Power Systems, System x and System z servers. In addition, information can be obtained for facility management equipment such as power distribution units (PDUs), uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) and cooling units. For a complete list of supported hardware, see the AEM Information Center

AEM also provides configuration utilities to define relationships between IT resources and facility-management equipment. This relationship information can be used, in combination with the monitored data, to provide a better view of the current data-center conditions. This article explains how to define power and cooling relationships using AEM. It also discusses how this information can be used to help with data-center management decisions regarding power and cooling.

Configuring Relationships

First of all, the power and cooling devices (and the resources they power and cool) must be discovered using the IBM Systems Director system discovery support. Some facility-management equipment can be discovered directly. Others can be discovered indirectly through the discovery of a supported facility-management application server such as APC’s InfraStruXure Central, Liebert’s SiteScan or Eaton’s Power Xpert Reporting.

Power relationships. Power relationships are configured using the AEM Configure Metering Device utility (Figure 1). They indicate how power flows through the data center. For example, relationships can be configured between a UPS and multiple PDUs to indicate the PDUs receive power from the UPS. If a dual-corded server is plugged into multiple PDUs, relationships between the server and each PDU can be created to identify the power redundancy.

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