Shut down servers when idle

Cassatt Corp. is betting soaring energy costs combined with increasing green initiatives in IT will make a new feature in Cassatt Active Response data center management software quite appealing. With the release of version 5.1 today, users of the San Jose-based company's tool will be able to set policies that let you turn servers off because the Cassatt program detects the machine is idle.

Jay Fry, vice president of marketing, says the policies are broad enough to accommodate virtually anyone's definition of "idle." But he doesn't think data center managers should be so timid or tradition-bound that they are reluctant to turn servers off.

"It's an urban myth that it's a bad thing to turn off servers," he contends.

Ken Oestreich, director of product management, adds that it's not enough for IT managers to buy power-efficient servers or rely solely on server consolidation to achieve energy-saving or green goals.

"Just because you buy energy-efficient light bulbs doesn't mean you forget about light switches," he says.

Cassatt Active Response 5.1 works with a variety of management software, such as for load balancers and trouble ticket systems, so that false alerts are not generated. The upgrade also includes support for more server systems' power controllers, including Sun Microsystems.

Pricing for Cassatt Active Response starts at $200 per managed machine.