White Paper

Dell Power Center’s Power Policies for 12
th
-Generation Servers
18
Peak Power Reporting and Power Capping
Power Center measures and reports the power consumption data, including the minimum, maximum
and average power consumption of servers, and presents them on graphs at each sampling period; for
example, every 15 minutes, 1 hour, etc.
In Figure 10, maximum power consumption (pink line in the graph) is at one point above the power
capping value (yellow straight line in the graph). Depending on the situation, there may be a small
delay before Node Manager detects the spike, and due to this delay, this spike can sometimes be
observed. Generally, the circuit breaker trigger condition is decided by the power accumulated during
a short period, not by the maximum power, and Node Manager is designed to throttle the power in a
matter of milliseconds. Therefore, the sudden spike on the maximum power usage would likely not
trigger the tripping of the circuit breaker as long as the average power usage (the green line in the
figure) is maintained under the capping value.
Maximum power consumption spikes above the capping value Figure 10.