A big part of server management and maintenance
practices is planning for resources, including reducing the
environmental impact of servers. Power consumption of servers is a huge
environmental concern today. Not only is there the expense of power, but
there is the environmental impact in the form of the carbon footprint
of anything that consumes power.
Windows Server 2008 R2
was developed with green concerns in mind and specifically with reducing
the power consumption, carbon footprint, and, thus, environmental
impact of running a server. This includes server-level improvements and
data center-level improvements.
Windows Server 2008 R2 reduces the power consumption of individual servers through several new technologies, as follows:
A new Processor Power Management (PPM) engine—
The new PPM engine adjusts the processor speed and, thus, power
consumption, in response to demand. Windows Server 2008 R2 also
introduces the core parking feature, which idles processor cores that
are not being used and, thus, their power consumption is reduced.
Storage power management—
The ATA Slumber feature allows for new power states for a more nuanced
power utilization. Windows Server 2008 R2 will recognize solid state
drives and power them down when not in use, to reduce their power
consumption. And Windows Server 2008 R2 supports boot to SANs,
eliminating the need for direct attached drives and, thus, reducing
power consumption.
Intelligent Timer Tick Distribution— This allows processors to skip activation if not needed for work, reducing the power consumption of underutilized systems.
Reduced background work—
The Windows Server 2008 R2 also has reduced operating system background
work requirements, reducing power draw even further especially in idle
states.
Windows Server 2008 R2 also enables administrators to better manage power consumption across servers through the following:
Remote manageability of power policy—
Windows Server 2008 R2 has new Group Policy features for controlling
power options across a number of servers. Power policy can also be
configured remotely with PowerShell and with WMI scripting via the new root\cimv2\power namespace. These allow for much more sophisticated programmatic control of power consumption.
In-band power metering and budgeting—
Power consumption can be displayed as a performance counter in the new
Power Meter object. This object allows manufacturers to instrument their
platform power consumption live. This can be consumed by management
applications such as Operations Manager 2007 R2 with thresholds and
alerts. There is also a budget counter in the Power Meter object, which
allows power budgets to be set on a server-by-server basis.
New additional qualifier designed for Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo program— This
Power Management AQ addition to the program allows manufacturers to
distinguish themselves and identify power-saving features in their
products, enabling IT managers to purchase power-saving hardware to
complement the power-saving Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.
Many of these features
require no specific action on the part of an administrator, but
management and maintenance practices can be adjusted to account for
these green power features. For example, the power consumption at 100%
utilization for Windows Server 2003 SP2 and for Windows Server 2008 R2
servers is roughly the same. However, the power consumption at 30%
utilization is approximately 20% higher for Windows Server 2003 SP2 than
for Windows Server 2008 R2. At lower workloads, Windows Server 2008 R2
consumes less power. Most servers operate at lower workloads, so the
power savings for a Windows Server 2008 R2 server can be significant.
These Windows Server
2008 R2 features help organization move toward greener servers and data
centers and protect the environment.
