Intel Node Manager Features Benefits

1. Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager extends instrumentation in the server to report actual power usage
under load and to cap power to maximize productivity for every dollar and kilowatt spent in the data center on
power, cooling and infrastructure.
Understanding the Power and Cooling Challenge
With the world’s growing demand for data storage and computing power, data center operators must balance
the costs required to meet demand with available space in the data center. Power and cooling costs account
for as much as 50 percent of data center operating costs.1 And the price of power and cooling has risen as
much as 400 percent during the last several years,2 putting pressure on managers to further extend optimiza-
tion or face costly facility expansion.
Overcoming Data Center Design Obstacles
Data center designers must often rely on conservative estimates of power usage data leading to a host of
planning and management challenges. Designers populate server racks based on available server power infor-
mation and budgeted rack power, so without power usage data they must rely on the declared power rating
from the server nameplate. This can lead to an overstatement of the server’s actual power need, underutiliza-
tion of available rack power, and an inability to cap power usage per rack.
Data center cooling topologies are also often planned using overstated power demand and heat generation in-
stead of actual temperatures, leading to additional costs for over-cooling.
Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager helps data center managers overcome these obstacles by providing a
closed-loop, server power management system that interacts with the data center management console to
accurately report power usage and automatically controls the server to meet system policies. Used with oper-
ating system tools, Node Manager allows data center managers to set a power budget for a server, enabling
up to 20 percent denser deployments.3
In fact, when paired with Intel® Data Center Manager (a software
technology that provides power and thermal monitoring and management for servers, racks, and groups of
servers), the combined solution can help optimize entire data centers.
Instrumentation with Intel® Intelligent
Power Node Manager
Quick
Reference
Guide
Intel® Intelligent Power
Node Manager
Processors carry the capability to regulate their power consumption through
manipulation of their performance state, or P-state, which is the combintion of a
specific processor and voltage, and processor throttling state, or T-states. Intel
Intelligent Power Node Manager works with the BIOS and OS Power Management
(OSPM) to perform this manipulation and dynamically adjuds platform power to
achive maximum performance and power for a single node.

2. Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager gives you the tools to:
•Increase compute density: By comparing power demand and temperatures against server budget policies and workload requirements set by
the data center management system, unused power can be rescued, allowing more servers to be added to the rack.
• Improve Business Continuity: Data center managers can dynamically cap power to shed load, allowing critical jobs to continue running when
power or temperature events occur.
• Link cooling to actual power demand: By monitoring individual server power consumption, CPU utilization, and temperatures through in-
strumentation built into the server, cooling capacity can be linked to actual rack temperatures.
• Dynamically balance resources: Power consumption will eventually become part of the load balancing equation in virtual environments, and
Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager will enable data centers to dynamically manage power- and thermal-constrained systems and racks.
Managing Power Today and Tomorrow
Managing energy consumption is vital to today’s data center managers, in order to optimize their power, cooling, and data center footprint. As the
need for business computing increases, power and cooling issues will only become more critical. Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager takes ad-
vantage of instrumentation and other new technologies available in Intel® Xeon Processor 5500 to give data center managers the tools they need
today to analyze, manage, and enforce power and cooling policies for dynamic data center optimization.
Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager was implemented on Intel® Xeon® processor-based platforms (formerly codenamed Nehalem-EP) in early
2009. Additional enhancements to Intel Intelligent Node Manager are expected to be introduced* with next-generation server processors
(Nehalem EX).
Additional Resources
• “A Dynamic Approach to Power Budgeting,” Intel® Software Insight Magazine: http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/3802.htm
• “Baidu Proof of Concept White Paper”: http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-1492
• Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW-a9X2Xg-A
• Power Capping Animation: http://www.intel.com/business/resources/demos/xeon5500/powercapping/demo.htm
• Power Capping Podcast: http://video.intel.com/index.jsp?auto_band=x&rf=sv&fr_story=ca6ac10438fe8864126b1939c227b2faab1ca27e
• Energy-efficient Performance: http://www.intel.com/technology/eep
• Data Center Efficiency: http://www.intel.com/technology/eep/data-center-efficiency
1
IDC Virtualization and Multicore Innovations Disrupt the Worldwide Server Market. Document number: 206035. Publish date: Mar 2007.
2
Ibid.
3
Dynamic Power Optimization for Higher Server Density Racks – A Baidu Case Study with Intel® Dynamic Power Technology (Intel, 2008). See http://software.intel.com/sites/datacentermanager/intel_node_manager_v2e.pdf for more details.
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Figure 1. Potential usage models based on Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager3
.