VMware Distributed Power Management is for me one of the real advantages of having a virtual environment, because with this, we will reduce power consumption a lot in our CPD. DPM allows VMware ESX hosts that are not needed are turned off, and when virtual machines are loaded and need more physical servers, they pull up automatically. All this would be achieved on a cluster DRS with DPM enabled. The power consumption of a server is 15W when in standby mode and depending on the server and its components can vary approximately between 300W and 500W when it is started. On this basis, we can calculate how much we can save if we choose and configure a cluster VMware VMware VMware DRS + DPM. Example:

Example, from that we have four servers, multiply the W (watt) for hours of daily use, the host will remain lit 24 hours, the calculation would be 500W x 24 = 12000Wh/día = 12kWh/día. A year would 12kWh/día x 365 days = 4380kWh/año on each server, if the kWh costs € 0.10 (depending on what you have booked with your company), the power consumption of each server will cost € 432 / year, taking four servers for a total of € 1,728 annual utility costs.

If this virtualized environment, taking into account that we will use non-working hours to shut off the host automatically and when workload ESX host will light as many as needed. Therefore, we will have a host on the 24 and three day stay on 10h and 14h in standby mode (taking into account that no weekend workload, therefore the three host remain on standby 24 hours .) The calculation would be:

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500W x 24 = 12000Wh/día = 12kWh/día x 365 days = 4380kWh/año x € 0.10 = € 432 / year, the host who always stays on.

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Calculation of a host on 10h a day, taking into account the days (22días per month):
500W x 10h = 5000Wh/día = 5kWh/día x 22 days x 12 months = 110kWh/mes = 1320kWh/año x € 0.10 = 132 € / year
15W x 14h = 210Wh/día = 0.21 kWh / day x 22 days = 4.62 kWh / month x 12 months = 55.44 kWh / year x € 0.10 = € 5.54 / year
15W x 24h = 360Wh/día = 0.36 kWh / day x 8 days did not work = 2.88 kWh / month x 12 months = 34.56 kWh / year x € 0.10 = € 3.45 / year

Let that, € 132 + € 5.54 + € 3.45 = 141 € / year, the host to remain configured in the cluster and configured DRS VMware Distributed Power Management.

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€ 141 x 3 hosts = 423 € 3 + € 432 hosts the host always on = 855 € a year in annual utility costs configured VMware DPM, compared to € 1,728 if we were not configured! we save the € 873!

This is a generic example, but you can easily calculate your consumption of servers based on your specifications, if you have an HP calculator that will help for next generation servers or G6 ( HP Power Advisor ) and if you are older ( HP Power Calculator ), other manufacturers I assume they have similar tools.

Once you understand all of the money we can save on power issue, not only for the consumption of the host, but also to take into account the air conditioning, the greater our CPD, the higher the total savings. Well, to enable VMware DPM, you first have to configure each VMware ESX host independently and test that power down properly and automatically switch to that end, we go to the tab "Configuration"> "Power Management" and we the "Properties ..."

To use VMware DPM is a need for IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) or iLO (Integrated Lights-Out) configured on the host, in the case of not knowing how to set up here is an example of how to configure HP iLO 2 ( http : / / www.bujarra.com/?p=883 ). You could use WOL (Wake On Lan) but is less reliable. We introduce the necessary data user name (Username), password (Password), the IP address (IP Address BMC) and MAC address (MAC Address BMC) BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) which is chip / driver. "OK."

To test and verify that the server is shut down automatically, select the right host and select "Enter Standby Mode"

If this is the first time you run, three windows will notice, this indicates that at first we go into Standby mode this server we can disregard the failure rate of cluster HA (failover level), we confirm if we are sure "Yes"

How is the first time he goes into Standby mode confirms that we may fail to start if it is the first time, misconfiguration, or that the host is incompatible. Simply that for safety it is advisable to first move off or suspended virtual machines to other hosts, so we marked "Move Suspended powered off virtual machines and hosts to Sell in the cluster" & "Yes"

Idem, give "OK"

I checked into the task bar (Recent Tasks) How to run the task ...

And after a few minutes / seconds the ESX host will have entered into Standby mode, so that server is already 'off',

To switch manually to verify that they will rise automatically, right-click and select "Power On"

... We hope while you start ...

And presto! this host will work properly with VMware DPM. Now do the same with the other host (optional) to verify that the rest do not have problems.

If you edit the properties of the cluster, we are going to "VMware DRS"> "Power Management" and configure the threshold for DPM Auto (Automatic)

We have five levels of aggression, we select the one that interests us depending on our environment.

And in "VMware DRS"> "Power Management"> "Host Options" is where we configure if a host that meets or not VMware DPM, leave this by default.

I recommend this video to a functional level to see what can VMware Distributed Power Management: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbRS0GGuNc

And if you are looking for official documentation, here's the VMware: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/distributed_power_management_vsphere.pdf