Cassatt unveils Active Reponse suite for cutting datacenter energy waste

Company says app-aware, platform-agnostic software intelligently powers servers off and on as needed

With backing from big-name IT companies such as Sun, Citrix, and Red Hat, Cassatt today unveiled its Active Response 5.0 software suite, capable of actively powering servers on and off as needed and pooling physical and virtual server resources to reduce datacenter energy waste by as much as 50 percent, according to the company.

Combining Cassatt Active Power Management and utility computing technologies based on Cassatt Collage, Active Response is designed to rein in the amount of power wasted by servers that often sit idle for long periods until they are needed. Those include machines in development and test centers, scale-out production environments, failover, and disaster recovery sites.

Specifically, Active Response employs a policy engine that, according to Cassatt, powers servers up and down on an as-needed basis, “[taking] into account server priorities and needs, server interrelationships, application dependencies and relationships, and individual server power consumption.”

The software also takes into account variables such as peak and off-peak power schedules, time of day, and emergencies such as “demand curtailment” mandates from power companies to reduce electrical consumption.

Admins also can set policies to ensure server resources are available to meet service level agreements for application delivery.

The company says the system is application aware, knowing when and how apps must be shut down and brought back up. Further, it’s aware of application interdependencies shared across multiple servers, Cassatt reports.

The company says the suite will run on any platform and works with any virtual or physical server , (including blade servers). Changes to existing hardware and software configs aren’t necessary, either.

All told, there will be four editions of the Active Reponse suite: Standard, Premium, Data Center, and Enterprise. Especially interesting to me is the Enterprise Edition, slated for release in next year. The company says it will enable an organization to share and optimize its resources across multiple data centers in different geographies.

“Pooling your IT resources and then using software to intelligently and actively control them can create a real shift in the economics of running a datacenter,” said Michelle Bailey, research vice president for IDC, in a written statement. “With products like Cassatt Active Response, customers can start to see the type of energy efficiency, application availability, and datacenter responsiveness that previously were only possible by having much higher levels of infrastructure and operations investment.”

Cassatt, launched in 2003 and based in San Jose, Calif., has announced a fairly impressive array of supporters for its technology, including Sun, Citrix, Red Hat, and BearingPoint.

“We view green initiatives that promise to reduce energy with minimal resources as a win-win for everyone, and as a platform with the potential to transform the data center,” said Frederic Veron, managing director, financial services infrastructure solutions at BearingPoint, in a written statement. “We are very pleased to be working with Cassatt on Active Power Management solutions that will enable our clients’ data centers to intelligently power up or down in synch with business cycles and demand.”

Cassatt Active Response 5.0 will ultimately be available in four editions. Standard Edition, out on Nov. 16, starts at $200 per managed machine. The Premium Edition, available today, starts at $1,250 per managed machine. The Data Center Edition, also available today, starts at $2,500 per managed machine. Finally, the Enterprise Edition will be available in the second half of 2008.