INTEL POWER MANAGEMENT TOOL

By D.E.Levine

Intel recently released a new power management tool for data centers. Known as Data Center Manager (DCM), the tool is a software tool kit capable of reducing the power drawn by servers in data centers by tapping into hardware resources.

DCM communicates with Intel's Intelligent Power Node Manager software tool installed on the chip set of each server. Node Manager is then instructed by the middleware to set power limits for the servers based on the activity level

Companies can build software to manage or cap power consumption by individual servers or a group of servers by using the development kit.

Designed for use on servers running Intel's Xeon 5500 chips (which include motherboards with the Node Manager software) DCM is capable of capping power on inactive servers while raising the power bar on very active servers.

Since power consumption and regulation is a "hot" topic, we see DCM as a promising tool that should become increasingly popular.