HP SIM and iPDU integration and power consumption measuring

[bundalov]

Hello everyone.

I have one particular question about iPDU units integration in HP SIM. I have read a lot of documents and I have watched a lot of video materials trying to find out if iPDU unit can measure total power consumption on a daily, weekly or monthly basis - not just in real time.

This is the situation: We have cages where clients are placing their hardware. We want to charge power consumption that this hardware spent, lets say, on a monthly basis.

I need to know if this is possible with iPDU unit. Keep in mind that the hardware components are not only HP products. There are some Fujitsu Siemens, IBM etc. Can iPDU measure power consumption from third-party products???

If there is any extra questions, feel free to ask.

Regards,

Vladimir

[David Claypool]

This feature is not a basic HP SIM capability; it is licensed with Insight Control. Insight Control licenses are not available and cannot be applied to non-HP servers.

The Intelligent PDU (iPDU) utilizes some emerging industry standards to get serial numbers over the power line so that consumption can be correlated to the unit consuming it; this requires ProLiant G6 or later. I have no information on whether late model Fujitsu or IBM systems have implemented this.

Long story short, this is not available for non-ProLiant servers.

[Mark Criss]

Vladimir,
Not sure if David covered all of your questions or not. But I'll elaborate on some parts that I think you are asking.

You said you are "trying to find out if iPDU unit can measure total power consumption on a daily, weekly or monthly basis - not just in real time."

This historical power monitoring you are requesting is not part of iPDU. Instead it is a feature of the HP SIM plugin called Insight Control power management (f.k.a. IPM) and does not require iPDU.

Later you say "Can iPDU measure power consumption from third-party products???"

The answer is yes. And similarly, Insight control can provide historical power consumption for third party products by utilizing iPDU or other intelligent PDUs that have outlet level monitoring. See the Insight Control user guide for a complete list of supported PDUs.

As David mentioned, only HP servers support the intelligent discovery feature that iPDU provides to automatically detect what servers are plugged in to what outlet.

Hope this helps.

Thanks
Mark

[bundalov]

Hello David and Chris and thanks for your helpful answers.

The thing is that I have HP SIM 6.0 installed with Insight Control and I couldn't find any power management features.
Later I have found that before 6.2 you have to install stand-alone software like Virtual Machine management, Power Management and Server Migration.

I will upgrade to 6.3 now where there is Power Management placed within Insight Control package.

A good thing is that I probably won't buy any iPDU units because if I can collect information about power consumption in Power Management - there is no need for purchasing iPDUs.

I will keep you posted.

Best regards,

Vladimir

[phil gaisford]

One more task to accomplish then: check the IC 6.3 support matrix (www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs) to ensure that your HP servers are supported for power management. Not all HP servers support power metering -- iPDU would be useful for any such cases, and for the non-HP equipment too.

[bundalov]

Hello Phil and thanks for your suggestion.

I have checked and my HP servers (BL 460c) are supported. My company will purchase in future only G7 class.

Vladimir