I am consistently amazed by the stories I hear from customers and in industry publications about the power issues that data centers are facing these days. Given the increased compute demand, decreasing budgets and power & cooling resource constraints, data centers simply cannot continue to operate as they have in the past. These challenges are especially true for Cloud deployments, where the sheer scale of the installations magnifies any resource utilization inefficiencies – especially power – and reduces the TCO benefits promised. Data Center Managers need new levels of understanding and control of their power resources in order to allocate capacity to seamlessly meet the needs of their customers, and instrumentation is evolving to provide those new capabilities that are required. At its core, instrumentation is all about sources of data and points on control, and can be at the individual component level, coordinated server level, aggregated group level or even integrated into the facility and building management system level. At IDF in SFO, you will see a wealth of demos and sessions that will highlight how OEMs and ISVs can use a wealth of instrumentation points - starting with Intel Xeon Processor 5500 features - to develop and deliver innovative management and power management capabilities that can be used to run a Cloud environment is a more efficient manner. If you are at IDF, stop by one of the following sessions to learn more about instrumentation. I will be staffing the Meet The Experts event – stop by with your questions and thoughts on instrumentation! See you at IDF Sept 22-24 Dave
The Server Room Blog
2 Posts tagged with the intel_intelligent_power_node_manager tag
Using Instrumentation To Drive Data Center Efficiency In The Cloud
Posted by David Jenkins Aug 31, 2009
Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager is a new technology that is available with the Xeon 5500 Series Platforms released earlier this year. Many of you have asked me questions via Twitter (@Toadster) about "How can I use Node Manager?" - so I wanted to present some simple use cases to simplify the explanation of Node Manager and how you can best use the technology in your own enterprise.
First of all, let's explain the growth problem at hand. As servers shrink in size, the density of each server 'footprint' is growing from a power perspective... a few years ago, a single 42U rack could hold about 21 servers (estimating 2U servers) - and usually hosting one or two apps/servers per physical server, depending on if you had single or dual-socket servers. In modern datacenters, that same 42U rack can hold 42 servers (1U each) with 2P per server - so you have an immediate density increase of 2X the # of servers, and 2-4X the number of sockets - which can equate to 16X the number processor threads per rack... one good thing is that Intel has been developing newer technologies to keep the TDP of each CPU roughly the same over the same time period between processor updates... where you used to have 2 or 4 cores, you now have 8 to 16 cores at the same thermal envelope!
Knowing how much power your platform uses is a key factor in populating racks and rows in your datacenter. Prior to Node Manager technology, most Datacenter Managers would base rack population on 'nameplate' power - or the (W) rating on your power supply. That's the 'max' power utilized by the platform, and what the PSU is rated for (worst case). See the image below...
As you can see - using Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager technology, you can view your system's power utilization in real-time using Intel Datacenter Manager and the administrator can implement the power caps to ensure your server rack stays within your required power limits. By utilizing the 'actual' power limits instead of nameplate power, you can increase your rack density thereby increasing your ROI, and decrease your TCO! Lets face it - everyone loves saving money!
Many of us are familiar with this next scenario... it's summertime, and the power company is announcing that the power grid is under strain. Personal homes start having their A/C cut-off to save the power grid from brown-outs... now your enterprise can help reduce those risks as well!
Over the next few weeks, I hope to post more blogs/videos:
1. Single Node Power Monitoring & Management
2. Group/Rack Power Monitoring & Management
3. Thermal Monitoring & Management
Please provide some feedback, and post your questions and ideas for upcoming blogs!