HP BL680c Delivering an Adaptive Infrastructure with the HP BladeSystem c-Clas - Page 14

Technology Power capping Power-aware workload placement Description Power capping allows administrators to constrain the BTUs per server blade or enclosure, enabling the enclosure to fit in an existing rack power envelope. A simple power cap allows devices to power on until power use reaches the specified power cap and then prevents any more devices from powering on. The optional Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping setting in the OA enables administrators to do power workload balancing and manage power at the enclosure level. As the servers run, the demand for power varies for each server. Dynamic Power Capping constantly monitors power inside the server or blade and then automatically, and nearly instantaneously, adjusts the power draw on the server when it reaches the maximum allocated capacity. This means users can control how much power a particular server blade enclosure is going to use and more accurately allocate that capacity within the datacenter. HP Capacity Advisor, part of Insight Dynamics - VSE, allows users to analyze a set of physical or virtual server workloads and recommends optimal placement on underlying physical servers for optimal power consumption. Design Aspects Real-time analysis/optimization Real-time analysis/optimization Virtualization Having proved themselves reliable, virtual machines (VMs) have become a staple in all modern consolidation and optimization projects. In addition, they allow administrators to isolate and encapsulate an entire OS environment. In fact, the term server virtualization is commonly used as a synonym for virtual machine technology and its software-layer abstraction.8 All ProLiant c-Class server blades include the unique Virtual Connect technology that abstracts and partitions the server-to-network I/O connections, and some server blades have been specifically designed for virtual machine deployments with capabilities for large memory footprints, large networking bandwidths, and easily expanded storage capabilities. Because of their flexibility, BladeSystem servers provide a natural platform for virtual machine implementations: • Hardware redundancy and availability • Embedded intelligence with Integrated Lights-Out management and Onboard Administrator • Capabilities for large memory, processing, and I/O footprints • Wide range of storage options including boot-from SAN, shared storage, direct-attached hot-plug SAS drives, and Smart Array Controller options • Power management tools: - Power meter for monitoring server power consumption use - Power Regulator for higher server efficiency - High-efficiency power supplies - Dynamic Power capping for provisioning power to groups of ProLiant servers - - HP Thermal Logic (for monitoring and managing BladeSystem servers) 8 Because server virtualization has come to refer to virtual machine technology, HP is moving toward the use of "machine abstraction" and "logical servers" to describe virtualized servers, regardless of whether the virtualization technologies are hardware-based or software-based. 14