Data centers require a lot of resources in order to maintain an uptime of over 99.5%. A lot of the work is picked up by data center power monitoring software and right now it is difficult to imagine what would happen if this activity had to be done without such tools.
Most of the problems encountered in a data center are usually associated with hardware failures. Most issues of this type can occur suddenly and with no give warning but a small portion can be prevented. Server load, balancing and resource utilization reflects in the power usage of the servers. If one server begins to experience 100% loads and intense internet traffic, the power consumption can spike. In a classic infrastructure, the damage is usually isolated. Failure associated with power consumption can affect only one system but in cloud based data centers, things change significantly. These setups have the advantage of distributing the work load evenly to avoid having one overloaded server but there is one great risk. As workload is distributed, it is possible to have all systems in a node reaching 100% load.
This situation means that the entire data center will go down. There is no failover solution for such a situation. However, this can be easily prevented by using monitoring software. Getting a picture of the entire center or maybe just one nod can prevent physical damage to take place due to power related issues and load balancing.
Besides server power consumption monitoring, the software can also provide invaluable data that can be used to estimate the eventual energy cost at a rack level. Being able to have a clear picture for each individual rack offers a good insight of what can be optimized and improved. This means that the administrator knows exactly how much it costs to keep them up and running and how many servers can be added without causing a power failure due to overloads of the power grid. Advanced features are usually offered by default by most power monitoring tool to include dashboards, history and efficiency data per rack, cluster or even individual assed present in the facility.
