Environmentally Cognizant Power Management

• US 20090228726A1
• Filed: 03/07/2008
• Published: 09/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/07/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sunbird Software, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Raritan Americas Incorporated (Legrand SA)
• Inventors: Weinstock, Neil, Malik, Naim R., Yang, Allen, Somasundaram, Siva, Paetz, Christian, Onyshkevych, Vsevolod
• Granted Patent: US 8,671,294 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/320
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3203 Power management, i.e. event-based initiation of a power-saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/329 by task scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/505 considering the load
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A method for environmentally cognizant power management that gathers server, application and environmental information from different devices to compute an aggregate behavior model.

Claims

1. A method for environmentally cognizant power management in a computing environment, comprising the steps of:

gathering a first level of server power metrics;

gathering a second level of server power metrics;

gathering environmental metrics;

generating a behavior model based on at least the first level of server power metrics, the second level of server power metrics and the environmental metrics; and

distributing an application load in the computing environment based on applying the behavior model to application, utilization and environmental contexts.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the application load is distributed to both physical locations and logical locations.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of constant monitoring and analyzing the computing environment for power management decisions.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first level of server power metrics, and the second level of server power metrics are gathered from different mechanisms to improve the accuracy of the power metric computation.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the behavior model is dynamic.

6. The method according to claim 1, further including the step of gathering a third level of server power metrics and wherein the step of generating a behavior model further includes at least the third level of server power metrics.

7. The method according to claim 1, further including the step of temporally synchronizing the first level of server metrics and the second level of server metrics.

8. The method according to claim 6, further including the step of temporally synchronizing the first level of server metrics, the second level of server metrics and the third level of server metrics.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein a first sampling interval is used to gather data for long term trending analysis and a second sampling interval is used to gather data for localized short term bursty activity.

10. A method for environmentally cognizant power management in a distributed computing system, comprising the steps of:

gathering process level information from different mechanisms to improve accuracy of power metric computation;

gathering environmental metrics;

generating a behavior model based on the process level information and the environmental metrics; and

allocating an application load among computing elements in the distributed computing system based on applying the behavior model to application, utilization and environmental contexts.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein the application load is distributed to both physical locations and logical locations.

12. The method according to claim 10, further comprising the step of constant monitoring and analyzing the computing environment for power management decisions.

13. The method according to claim 10, wherein the step of generating uses prioritized process level information.

14. The method according to claim 13, further comprising the step of filtering the process level information to prioritize the process level information with respect to power consumption.

15. Apparatus for environmentally cognizant power management in a computing system, comprising:

power sensors that gather different levels of process level information from different mechanisms to improve accuracy of power metric computation;

environmental sensors that gather environmental metrics;

a processor that generates a behavior model based on the process level information and the environmental metrics and allocates an application load among computing elements in the computing system based on applying the behavior model to application, utilization and environmental contexts.

16. The apparatus for claim 15, wherein the processor further comprises a filter module that prioritizes the process level information with respect to power consumption.

17. A framework for environmentally cognizant energy conservation, comprising:

an intelligent configuration module that controls information flow and capture;

a monitor engine for collecting multiple levels of information pertaining to electrical and computing energy analysis as determined by the intelligent configuration module; and

an analysis engine that adaptively tracks the association between electrical and computing power entities based on the information and environmental behavior.

18. The framework of claim 17, wherein the intelligent configuration module and monitor engine collects measurements at predetermined intervals to match needed precision and sampling rate.