Power Management - Dell PowerEdge M1000e Technical Manual

4 or 5 PSUs — No throttling will occur.
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110V power — Throttling will occur in all power supply configurations if a full set of heavily
—
configured blades are worked hard at the same time.

Prioritized performance — Under throttling conditions, there will be a performance impact on
the lower-priority servers.
Dell recommends using the CMC Power Prioritization feature to indicate which servers have
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the highest priority and which have the lowest priority.
Multiple low-priority servers can spread out the impact of prioritization. If all servers are the
—
same priority, they would each experience a slight performance impact as the throttling
would be passed from server to server.

Delayed power-ups — When pushing the limits of the guidelines listed in Table 13, one to three
servers may not be powered on during the initial power-up sequence if all servers were started
simultaneously. The servers may need to be powered on in a second power-up action after the
initial blades go through their post-boot power inventory and allocation. iDRAC with Lifecycle
Controller 3.02 enables automatic retries if blades attempt simultaneous power-ups and do not
power on.
For the PowerEdge M910 blade server, Dell recommends that you install the modular iDRAC with
Lifecycle Controller firmware 3.02 upgrade, which contains the following enhancements:
Improved power budgeting to lower the amount of power budget that the M910 requests from
the CMC, enabling more servers to run on fewer power supplies.
Functionality to enable iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller to retry power-ups for blade servers
automatically in the event that some servers do not power up initially due to the pre-boot power
inventory.

Power management

Power is no longer just about power delivery, it is also about power management. The M1000e
system offers many advanced power management features. Most of these features operate
transparently, while others require only a one-time selection of desired operating modes.
Shared power takes advantage of the large number of resources in the modular server, distributing
power across the system without the excess margin required in dedicated rack-mount servers and
switches. The M1000e has an advanced power budgeting feature, controlled by the CMC and
negotiated in conjunction with the iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller on every server module. Prior to
any server module powering up, through any of its power-up mechanisms such as AC recovery,
WOL or a simple power button press, the server module iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller performs a
sophisticated power budget inventory for the server module, based upon its configuration of
processors, memory, I/O and local storage. Once this number is generated, the iDRAC with Lifecycle
Controller communicates the power budget inventory to the CMC, which confirms the availability of
power from the system level, based upon a total chassis power inventory, including power supplies,
iKVM, I/O modules, fans, and server modules. Since the CMC controls when every modular system
element powers on, it can set power policies on a system level.
In coordination with the CMC, iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller hardware constantly monitors actual
power consumption at each server module. This power measurement is used locally by the server
module to ensure that its instantaneous power consumption never exceeds the budgeted amount.
While the system administrator may never notice these features in action, what they enable is a
more aggressive utilization of the shared system power resources. Thus the system is never flying
blind in regard to power consumption, and there is no danger of exceeding power capacity
availability, which could result in a spontaneous activation of power supply over-current protection
without these features.
PowerEdge M1000e Technical Guide
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