Users Guide

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Policies
A power policy is a set of configurations to manage the power cap for a device or group. A policy is
useful for power management in different situations. For example, you can create a policy to:
• Power Cap — Make sure that power consumption does not exceed the capacity of the circuit.
• Control Power Usage — Schedule power usage according to the workload of the device or group. For
example, you can set an aggressive cap when the workload is low, enabling a reduction of power use
for your data center.
• Increase rack density — For example, monitor the current power consumption of a rack with 10
devices to estimate how many more devices you can add to the rack. Then, establish a power policy
to cap the total power consumption of the rack after the devices are added.
Power Center supports two power cap policy types:
• Static — Manually set the power cap for each device in a rack or chassis.
• Dynamic — Power Center dynamically allocates the power cap for each device in a group (data
center, room, aisle, rack, or chassis).
From the Policies screen, you can:
• Create a power policy
• Edit a power policy
• Enable or disable a power policy
• Delete a power policy
• Refresh the list of policies
• Filter power policies so only certain policies are displayed
• Sort the list of policies
Dynamic power caps
The following terms are helpful for understanding how a dynamic power cap works:
• Consumption — The amount of power a device is using.
• Power Cap — The maximum amount of power that a device is allowed to consume (may not be equal
to its demand).
• Headroom — The difference between rack power capacity (specified by the user when the rack is
added to the Dell OpenManage Power Center system) and rack power consumption (determined by
the actual power consumption by PDUs added or associated with the rack).
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