Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
109
Partition power management
Available with Active Energy Manager 4.3.1 or later, and POWER7 systems with the 730
firmware release or later, is the capability to set a power savings mode for partitions or the
system processor pool. As in the system-level power savings modes, the per-partition
power savings modes can be used to achieve a balance between the power consumption
and the performance of a partition. Only partitions that have dedicated processing units
can have a unique power savings setting. Partitions that run in shared processing mode
have a common power savings setting, which is that of the system processor pool. The
reason is because processing unit fractions cannot be power-managed.
In the case of system-level power savings, two Dynamic Power Saver options are offered:
– Favor partition performance
– Favor partition power savings
The user must configure this setting from Active Energy Manager. When dynamic power
saver is enabled in either mode, system firmware continuously monitors the performance
and utilization of each of the computer’s POWER7 or processor cores that
belong to the partition. Based on this utilization and performance data, the firmware
dynamically adjusts the processor frequency and voltage, reacting within milliseconds to
adjust workload performance and also deliver power savings when the partition is
underused.
In addition to the two dynamic power saver options, you can select to have no power
savings on a given partition. This option keeps the processor cores assigned to the
partition running at their nominal frequencies and voltages.
A power savings mode, referred to as
inherit host setting
, is available and is applicable
only to partitions. When configured to use this setting, a partition adopts the power
savings mode of its hosting server. By default, all partitions with dedicated processing
units, and the system processor pool, are set to the inherit host setting.
On POWER7 and processor-based systems, several EnergyScale
technologies are embedded in the hardware and do not require an operating system or
external management component. More advanced functionality requires Active Energy
Manager (AEM) and IBM Systems Director.
Table 2-31 lists all features that are supported, showing all cases in which Active Energy
Manager (AEM) is not required, and also details the features that can be activated by
traditional user interfaces (for example, ASMI and HMC).
Table 2-31 AEM support
Feature
AEM required
ASMI
HMC
Power Trending
Yes
No
No
Thermal Reporting
Yes
No
No
Static Power Saver
No
Yes
Yes
Dynamic Power Saver
Yes
No
No
Power Capping
Yes
No
No
Energy-optimized Fans
No
-
-
Processor Core Nap
No
-
-
Processor Core Sleep
No
-
-
Processor Winkle mode
No
-
-
Processor Folding
No
-
-