AUTOMATIC DISCOVERY OF PHYSICAL CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN POWER OUTLETS AND IT EQUIPMENT

• US 20100005331A1
• Filed: 07/07/2008
• Published: 01/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sunbird Software, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Raritan Americas Incorporated (Legrand SA)
• Inventors: Yang, Allen, Somasundaram, Siva
• Granted Patent: US 8,886,985 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/340
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/26 Power supply means, e.g. regulation thereof for memories G11C
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/28 Supervision thereof, e.g. detecting power-supply failure by out of limits supervision
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3203 Power management, i.e. event-based initiation of a power-saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3062 where the monitored property is the power consumption power management in a computing system G06F1/3203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3093 Configuration details thereof, e.g. installation, enabling, spatial arrangement of the probes

Abstract

The invention relates generally to the field of power management in data centers and more specifically to the automatic discovery and association of connectivity relationships between power outlets and IT equipment, and to methods of operating data centers having automatic connectivity discovery capabilities.

Claims

1. A method for operating a data center having a plurality of servers powered via a plurality of power supply outlets, the method comprising of steps of:

determining a first set of candidate power outlets for at least one of the servers connected to at least one of the power outlets;

collecting power consumption data for the candidate power outlets over time and central processing unit utilization data for the at least one server during an overlapping time; and

correlating the CPU utilization data to the power consumption data to determine a second set of candidate power supplies.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the determining step includes the substep of determining candidate power outlets located within a specified distance from the at least one server.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of correlating the power consumption data to theoretical power consumption data for the at least one server.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the collecting step includes the substep of specifying an IP address for the at least one server.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the correlating step includes the substep of quantizing the CPU utilization data.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the correlating step includes the substep of time-stamping the power consumption data and the CPU utilization data.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the correlating step includes the substep of correlating state changes between the CPU utilization data and the power consumption data.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of correlating the power consumption data to theoretical power consumption data for the at least one server,

wherein the determining step includes the substep of determining candidate power outlets located within a distance from the at least one server,

wherein the collecting step includes the substep of specifying an IP address for the at least one server and

wherein the correlating step includes the substeps of

quantizing the CPU utilization data,

time-stamping the power consumption data and the CPU utilization data, and

correlating state changes between the quantized CPU utilization data and the power consumption data.

9. A system for automatically discovering the connectivity of servers to power outlets in a data center comprising:

a data collection module interfaced with power supply outlets and IT equipment, the data collection module operable to collect actual power usage for power supply outlets and CPU usage from IT equipment;

a data store having the information collected by the data collection module; and

a correlation engine operable to correlate the CPU usage data with actual power usage data to identify IT equipment connected to power supply outlets on a one-to-one basis.

10. A method for monitoring racks of IT equipment comprising the steps of:

aggregating CPU usage data for the data equipment in a database;

determining candidate power outlet and IT equipment connectivity pairs, including the substep of determining a maximum distance from a candidate server to a candidate power supply strip;

correlating CPU usage for a candidate IT server with actual power usage of a candidate power strip, including the substep of identifying state changes for the IT equipment;

and matching the state changes to the actual power usage profile.