White Paper

Dell Power Center’s Power Policies for 12
th
-Generation Servers
15
Managing Power Policies
Power Center provides the aggregated data for power monitoring at the group, rack, row, or room
level, or an entire data center. Based on the group hierarchy and power monitoring, users can set the
appropriate power policy for each group. However, if there are many groups and the hierarchy
becomes overly complex, it would be difficult to track and manage the power policy for each group.
To address this problem, Power Center provides a global view for all of the power policies. Figure 8
illustrates how all the power policies are presented in one global table for power policy management in
Power Center.
From the table, users can view all of the currently-enabled power policies. For each policy, the table
displays the operational status, the group to which the policy applies, the power capping values, and
the scheduling information. To change any one of the power policies, users can simply click the “Edit”
option on the far left of the policy.
View, manage, and mitigate all power policies from one place Figure 8.
Power Provisioning Using Real-Time Versus Nameplate Data
A server is normally tagged with a nameplate rating that indicates the maximum power draw of that
server. The main purpose of this rating is to inform the administrator of the power infrastructure
required to supply power to that server without any consideration of power mitigation. It is typically
rated by the manufacturer for the worst-case power draw of all components in a fully-utilized
configuration. As such, it is a conservative number that is virtually guaranteed not to be reached.