Intel Cloud Builders Guide: Policy Power Management With Dell & VMware

To support the evolution to the cloud, Intel® works with end users to create an open data center roadmap of usage models that address key IT pain points for more secure, efficient and simple cloud architectures built on a foundation of transparency. This paper describes a policy power management reference architecture based on Intel, VMware® and Dell™ solutions. Policy power management refers to usage models aimed at power efficiency.

The goal of policy power management usage models is to optimize productivity per watt in order to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). Requirements include the capability to monitor and cap power in real-time at server, rack, zone and data center levels. This means the ability to manage aggregated power consumption within a rack, zone, or data center based on available power and cooling resources. Load migration policies based on power consumption and cooling resources bring further benefits.

The following power management use cases along with experimental results and data are described:

• Real-time server power monitoring to perform power aware scheduling
• Optimization of rack density to maximize available compute resources
• Power-optimized workloads to achieve power efficiency
• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• Data center energy reduction through power aware support for multiple service classes to enforce multiple SLAs across different populations of users with different priority workloads

The paradigm of cloud computing brings opportunity for data center efficiency. Policy power management usage models can substantially help to meet power management requirements.