Using ICT Energy consumption for monitoring ICT usage in an enterprise

International audienceEnergy efficient policies are being applied to network protocols, devices and classical network management systems (NMS). Researchers have already studied in depth each of those fields, including for instance a long monitoring processes of various number of individual ICT equipment from where power models are constructed. With the development of smart intelligent meters and emerging protocols such as SNMP and NETCONF, currently there is an open field to couple the power models, translated to the expected behavior of the devices, with the real-time energy measurements. The goal is to derive a comparison on the power data between those parameters in the direction of detection for possible deviations on the expected results. The logical assumption is that a detected fault in the usage of a particular device will not only increase its own energy usage, but also may cause additional consumption on the other devices part of the network. This paper shows the opportunities to use power consumption monitoring of an ICT infrastructure as a substitute for the classical NMS. A platform is developed to monitor and analyze the retrieved power data of a simulated enterprise ICT infrastructure. Moreover, smart algorithms are developed which are aware of the different states that are occurring on each device during their typical use phase. Hence, the platform is able to detect and isolate possible anomalies, for instance improper use of the networking devices. The produced results are obtained and validated with the use of Cisco switches and routers, Dell Precision stations and Raritan PDU as part of the monitored infrastructure