Between customers' sustainability initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and the need to control energy consumption and costs, the ability to report, analyze, and act on server power usage data has become a key initiative.
This DfD technical note explores the wealth of server power data provided by Dell PowerEdge servers and the various methods for collecting, reporting, analyzing, and processing this data.
What is a server power consumption calculator?
iDRAC provides a wide variety of server power information. The amount and frequency of information vary depending on the iDRAC version and liceused features, as well as the choice of optional tools and consoles.
One-to-one and one-to-many
Depending on needs and preferences, there are several ways to view server power consumption calculator data from iDRAC.
One way to do this is to open the web interface GUI.
Another approach is to retrieve the data using a script (Racadm or Redfish).
iDRAC can also send data to the OpenManage Enterprise Power Manager plug-in.
OpenManage Enterprise can also forward this information to CloudIQ for PowerEdge.
For those looking for the ultimate solution, iDRAC9 can stream these power statistics as telemetry data to analytics solutions such as Splunk or ELK Stack for real-time in-depth analysis.
Power supply data of the PowerEdge server
The integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) is embedded in every Dell PowerEdge server, enabling secure and remote server access for out-of-band and agentless administration tasks.
Features include BIOS configuration, operating system deployment, firmware updates, health monitoring, and maintenance.
One key set of data provided by iDRAC is power usage.
For more than a decade, IT administrators have been using iDRAC data to see and react to power problems.
The iDRAC engineering team continues to expand the capabilities in the iDRAC UI and the information available on one-to-many consoles such as OpenManage Enterprise.
iDRAC9, which enables the data center feature set, further extends the solution with telemetry streaming.
iDRAC
iDRAC continuously monitors power consumption, processing, and reporting at the individual server level.
The browser user interface displays the following power values:
Power warnings and critical thresholds
Cumulative power, peak power, and peak current values
Power consumption in the past hour, last day, or last week
Average, minimum, and maximum power consumption with historical peak and peak time stamps
Peak and instantaneous headroom (for rack and tower servers)
iDRAC9 provides a graphical view of these power metrics, such as the power examples shown here.
iDRAC9 connects to all key server components and, combined with data center licenses, collects more than 180 server metrics in near real-time.
These metrics include granularity, time-stamped data for key functions such as processor and memory utilization, network cards, power consumption, heat dissipation, and more.
iDRAC9 streams this telemetry data in real-time.
Obtain the server power consumption calculator supply - RACADM CLI example
The RACADM command line provides a basic scriptable interface that enables you to retrieve server power locally or remotely.
In addition to the CLI interface, iDRAC also supports the Redfish RESTful API.
Examples of Powershell and Python scripts that can be used to collect power data can be downloaded from the Dell area on Git Hub. The RACADM CLI can be accessed from the following interface:
Local - Supports running RACADM commands from the hosting server's operating system (Linux/Windows).
To run the local RACADM command, install the OpenManage DRAC Tools software on the managed server.
SSH or Telnet (also known as Firmware RACADM) - By logging into iDRAC using SSH or Telnet, you can access firmware RACADM.
Remote - Supports running the RACADM command from a remote management station, such as a laptop or desktop running Windows or Linux.
To run the server power consumption calculator remote RACADM command, install the OpenManage DRAC Tools software on the management station.
Sign in to leave a comment.