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Brad Lawrence, Ph.D.
John Jenne
Dell Energy Smart Architecture and
Power Management Adoption
This Dell white paper addresses how Dells current server power
management architecture instills confidence in power management
feature adoption.
ii Dell Energy Smart Architecture and Power Management Adoption
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................... 3
Dells Energy Smart Architecture ................................................................ 3
Design ................................................................................................ 5
Measurement ........................................................................................ 6
Control ............................................................................................... 6
Reporting ............................................................................................ 7
Conclusion ........................................................................................... 9
Executive summary
Data center decision makers like you have probably noticed that IT equipment power
consumption has risen steadily from year-to-year, making energy efficiency a focal point
for customers and for equipment vendors. However, even with the increased focus,
research findings indicate low adoption rates for power management features. Lack of
awareness and concerns with the effects of power management features on IT
performance are frequently cited as potential barriers to adoption.
Dells Energy Smart Architecture (DESA) has been developed to address these concerns by
providing power management technologies that reap power-saving benefits while
operating at or near peak performance. Many power-saving features in Dells current
server lineup are simply built-in and have no effect on server performance at all. Beyond
these designs, optional power management controls exist that allow for even greater
power-saving and money-saving opportunities with minimal to zero effect on performance
for the majority of server workloads. Finally, Dell provides transparent metric reporting,
such that customers can track their power management benefits against server
performance, building confidence for power management adoption in the data center.
3 Dell Energy Smart Architecture and Power Management Adoption
Introduction
Data center equipment vendors have increased their focus on power consumption and
energy efficiency over the last several years to better meet the needs of their
customers.
1
Data center equipment can exhibit power consumption rates at idle that
are greater than 50% of the power consumed at maximum performance. With newer
processor, memory, storage, and networking technologies being introduced to keep up
with IT demands, significant power and cooling issues exist in the modern data center.
According to a recent study by The Green Grid, in addition to power consumption
issues, current power management features are not widely used due to lack of
awareness, organizational issues, the absence of a clear ROI methodology, and a
general mistrust that the features will function seamlessly and have no adverse effect
on computing performance.
2
The Dell Energy Smart Architecture (DESA) has been
developed to address todays power management needs to achieve power-saving
benefits while operating at peak performance.
Dell Energy Smart Architecture
The core tenets of DESA, built using Dell Energy Smart Technologies (DEST), are
designed for efficiency, measurement, control, and reporting. DESA optimizes
performance and power through a system-wide approach using efficient design
principles across electrical, mechanical, and thermal architectures. Combining this
with intelligent component selection sets a new bar for power efficiency in the data
center. These designs do not compete with nor compromise performance in any way.
Table 1 highlights the DESA core tenets and some of the underlying Dell Energy Smart
Technologies.
Data center
equipment can
exhibit power
consumption rates
at idle that are
greater than 50%
of the power
consumed at
maximum
performance.
The core tenets of
DESA, built using
Dell Energy Smart
Technologies
(DEST), are
designed for
efficiency,
measurement,
control, and
reporting.
4 Dell Energy Smart Architecture and Power Management Adoption
Table 1.Dell Energy Smart Architecture (DESA) core tenets and technologies
Design
Power supplies
High efficiency
Right-sized
Voltage Regulators (VRs)
High efficiency
Switching
Phase shedding
Board design
Low-loss PCB/connectors
BIOS
Processor P, C, T-states
DDR3 frequencies
DDR3 CKE
FSB power management
Thermal
High-airflow chassis
Optimized heat sinks
Independent fan control
Fan de-population
PWM fans
DIMMs with heat spreaders, sensors,
and closed loop monitoring
Components
Low voltage processors
and DIMMs
20 Gb DRAMs
UDIMMs
QR x8 DIMMs
Green hard drives
SSDs
Low power fans
Measure
Temperature
Ambient
Processor
Chipset
DIMMs
Power supplies
System-level power
Amperage
BTUs
Voltage
Watts
Performance
Processor utilization
Memory throughput
I/O throughput
Control
BIOS
Active Power Controller
(OS independent)
OS enabled processor power
management
Power management profiles
Processor core disablers
Host LOM port disablers
Unused component disablers
Firmware
Non-linear fan curve
Adaptive thermal algorithm
Closed loop thermal monitoring
Power capping
LOM port disablers
IDLE memory control
Static memory phase shedding
Power inventory/budget
Staggered power on
Dell OpenManage
Remote power On/Off
Report
Power
Averages
Peaks
Real-time
Mechanisms
Tables
Graphing
Alarms/alerts
5 Dell Energy Smart Architecture and Power Management Adoption
Design
Design improvements across the entire system account for significant power efficiency
gains. Electrical architecture contributions to power efficiency include highly
optimized power supply designs (with platform-dependent 80 PLUS