Surveyor is a comprehensive power management solution that helps you manage the power states of computers and network-connected devices in a way that reduces energy consumption without disrupting work activity.
Surveyor measures, monitors, and regulates energy consumption of a variety of network devices from a central location, using a web-based administrator console.
- Measure Costs: For any device connected to the system, Surveyor can track the time spent in each power state and its energy usage. Surveyor can track Windows PCs, Macintosh computers, and EnergyWise-enabled devices (IP phones, switches, wireless access points, routers, router modules, iPDUs, security cameras).
- Manage Energy: The administration tools in Surveyor help you manage the power states of network-connected devices using direct commands and scheduled policies that you define to fit your organization’s needs.
- Optimize Savings: Surveyor reports on the data it collects in useful charts and graphs that show device and user activity. In addition to energy consumption and savings reports, Verdiem provides a range of useful information to help manage your PC fleet.
Surveyor features
Surveyor provides the following key features:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Centralized administration | Centralized administration of device power states from a single, easy to use Web-based administrator console. |
| Agent-based power management | Agent-based, non-intrusive PC and Mac power management with minimal impact to end-users, business applications, or IT maintenance activity. |
| Direct device management | The ability to manage and control devices immediately via direct commands, or through policies and scheduled power schemes. |
| Usage data collection | The ability to collect actual usage information for computers to help you optimize intelligent power management policies. |
| Remote access and Wake on LAN support | Unhindered remote access to office computers and high performance Wake on LAN support for waking PC and Mac client agents. End users can wake Surveyor client agents from a remote location over the web and schedule strategic wake requests to work around scheduled maintenance windows. |
| Locations, energy rate schedules, and currencies | Support for multiple location that devices can be assigned to manually or through auto-assignment rules. Each location can have associated energy costs (fixed or variable for TOU and intraday rates) in that location's currency. Reports reflect correct savings by automatically calculating local currencies exchange rates with the specified system currency. |
| Role-based security | Group-oriented administration with role-based security privileges. |
| Dashboard and Analytics reporting | Role-based dashboards provide actionable information on energy costs, C02 emissions, and asset inventory and health to key stakeholders. Summary reports can be emailed automatically on a scheduled basis. Analytics allow you to generate energy management and IT efficiency reports that dive-down into data based on group, location, and other categories of interest. |
| Device event reporting | Event reporting for analysis and optimization. Important events are recorded and reported to a central server. |
| Cisco EnergyWise device support | Unified control of Cisco EnergyWise-enabled devices through network-based measurement of power draw and network-based control of device power levels. (Requires Cisco EnergyWise-enabled network hardware and Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices.) For details, see "Configuring Surveyor for EnergyWise devices" in the Surveyor 6 Administrator Guide. |
Configuring power management in Surveyor
Power management is the ability to move devices into appropriate power states as demand requires.
A device in Surveyor can be a Windows PC, Macintosh computer, or EnergyWise-enabled devices such as switches, routers, router modules, IP phones, iPDUs, and wireless access points (WAPs).
When devices first connect to Surveyor, they are automatically assigned the Baseline Data Collection policy. While a device uses this policy, data is collected to measure energy use and user activity; no power management settings are enforced.
Policies contain the following types of settings:
- Scheduled power schemes (PC and Mac only) that specify the amount of time of user inactivity before a device transitions to a lower power state. Each scheme can have a unique schedule.
- An unscheduled, background power scheme that runs 24/7 when no other power schemes are scheduled.
- Scheduled power level changes (such as wake, shutdown, sleep, or restart), each with a unique schedule. Power level changes apply to PC and Mac clients, or PoE devices.
- Wake settings for PC and Mac clients.
- Logging and data collection settings for PC and Mac clients.
Surveyor assigns policies manually or through assignment rules that you create. Each device can have only one policy assigned to it, but each policy can contain multiple schemes and power level changes, each with its own schedule.
NOTE: All power settings in policies apply to PC and Mac clients. For other types of devices, only scheduled power level changes apply. Surveyor collects data for all device types for reporting purposes.
Devices can be assigned to administrative groups, either manually or through assignment rules that you create. Groups help you to organize devices logically and aid you in applying role-based permissions for delegated administration.
Devices can also be assigned to locations, which have associated currencies and energy rate schedules. For more details, see Managing locations, energy rates, and currency.
For general steps, see "Getting started with power management" in the Surveyor 6 Administrator Guide.