HP Insight Control Power Management 7.3 User
Avoiding power provisioning errors
For certain scenarios — unintentionally adding more systems and devices than the limit in a data
center or power redundancy errors for unavailability of redundant power — any increase in power
demand may lead to tripped breakers and unexpected downtime. For such scenarios, Insight
Control power management helps you determine the actual power required for the IT equipments
and provision the required power to meet the need without using the excess capacity to protect
the power supply infrastructure.
Power Capping
Power Capping and Dynamic Power Capping
The power management features of HP ProLiant servers, are implemented in system hardware and
firmware and are independent of operating systems or applications. Using the power monitoring
and control mechanisms built into ProLiant servers, the Power Capping feature is specifically
designed to allow an administrator to limit, or cap, the power consumption of a server or a group
of servers. This capability provides increased flexibility in data center planning by allowing the
administrator to manage data center parameters that are directly influenced by server power
consumption, including data center cooling requirements and electrical provisioning. The Power
Capping feature also allows the administrator to control server power consumption in emergency
situations such as the loss of primary AC power.
Both HP Dynamic Power Capping and HP Power Capping are designed to achieve the same
general goal of maintaining the power consumption of a server at the same level or at a lower
level of a specified value, referred to as the cap value. However, HP Dynamic Power Capping
monitors the power consumption and maintains the power cap of a server much more faster than
HP Power Capping.
Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping
Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping is an enhancement of Dynamic Power Capping designed
specifically for HP BladeSystem enclosures. Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping is considered to
be the higher level of power management functionality because an administrator sets and maintains
a power cap at the enclosure level and not directly at the server or blade level. Also, it can be
viewed as a more powerful enhancement of group power capping for an enclosure because setting
a power cap for the enclosure indirectly creates power caps for the server blades within it.
For more information on power capping, see www.hp.com/go/dpc.
Powering up groups of servers
HP Dynamic Power Capping is a powerful tool for controlling the steady-state power consumption
of servers in real time. However, it does not control the power consumption of servers at startup.
If a group of servers on the same PDU are powered up simultaneously (for example, by using a
Data Center Power Control rule) there will be a window during startup before Dynamic Power
Capping is online when the servers determine their maximum power consumption and will draw
close to their maximum power at roughly the same time. If this peak is too large, it may cause
problems. To prevent this from occurring, it is important to power on these server groups in a
staggered manner. In the case of auto power-up situations, including during the execution of Data
Center Power Control rules, this staggered power-up can be achieved by enabling the servers'
Power On Delay and setting it to Random up to 120 seconds. This is accomplished through the
iLO interface or through the enclosure OA for BladeSystem servers.
Power monitoring for Integrity servers
HP Insight Control power management enables you to monitor power of supported Integrity servers
using Power Regulator modes and power topology. For a list of supported servers, see the HP
Insight Management Support Matrix available at http://www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs.
16 Key concepts