Abstract
Energy directly consumed by data center equipment, the resulting heat produced and the energy that it takes to provide cooling can account for a majority of overall operating costs in today’s data centers, making it a top concern for IT and facilities managers worldwide. Energy efficiency is also a driver of overall data center utilization as inefficient systems cannot be deployed as densely due to available power per rack and requisite airflow, reducing the expectations of longevity for the facility. Utilized across ProLiant, Integrity, BladeSystem and even certain HP Storage platforms, HP Common Slot power supplies help IT data centers to achieve optimum power efficiencies by right-sizing the power output for each system. Additionally, HP Common Slot power supplies reduce administrative costs by improving power management and providing a common form factor that reduces operational costs for spares when deploying a mix of HP Server and Storage solutions. This technology brief describes how HP Common Slot power supplies help to increase compute capacity and reduce operating costs by improving power efficiency in the data center.
Introduction
The demand for computing, storage, and networking capacity has been continuously increasing. For many organizations, this has created an IT resource sprawl that can be costly in terms of energy consumption and management. With Converged Infrastructure, HP is transforming IT technology silos into interoperable, shared pools of resources. A key component of this is the next-generation HP ProLiant servers with the ProActive Insight architecture and its technologies for automated energy optimization.
These technologies reduce the power and airflow needed to operate ProLiant Gen8 servers, enabling you to reclaim limited space, power, and cooling resources for needed workloads. Additionally, they reduce the need for error-prone manual processes associated with asset tracking, checking, and documenting with regards to power and rack configurations. The automated energy optimization capabilities in the new ProLiant family are enabled by HP 3D Sea of Sensor technologies. With embedded intelligence across three dimensions—sense of location, power utilization, and thermal demand—you gain a unique level of visibility and control over the energy efficiency of your data center. With the addition of HP’s new high-efficiency Platinum Plus Common Slot power supplies, energy savings at the processing level (server, storage and networking equipment) can result in the greatest reduction in power requirements making the power supply a key element in achieving energy-efficient IT operations.
HP Common Slot power supplies
HP Common Slot (CS) power supplies are designed to allow IT administrators to implement a Converged Infrastructure using energy-efficient, inter-changeable, and manageable components. HP CS power supplies are available in three power ratings; 460 watts, 750 watts, and 1200 watts (Table 1), allowing you to “right-size” a power supply to a specific server or storage configuration. HP's latest set of CS power options, Platinum Plus, meet 80 PLUS requirements for Platinum certification.