You can use this metric to set practical goals that respect the tradeoff between power and performance. In contrast, a goal of 10 percent energy savings across the data center fails to capture the corresponding effects on performance and vice versa.
Similarly, if you tune your server to increase performance by 5 percent, and that results in 10 percent higher energy consumption, the total result might or might not be acceptable for your business goals. The energy efficiency metric allows for more informed decision making than power or performance metrics alone.
You should establish a baseline power measurement before you tune your server for energy efficiency. If your server has the necessary support, you can use the power metering and budgeting features in Windows Server to view system-level energy consumption by using Performance Monitor. One way to determine whether your server has support for metering and budgeting is to review the Windows Server Catalog.
If your server model qualifies for the new Enhanced Power Management qualification in the Windows Hardware Certification Program, it is guaranteed to support the metering and budgeting functionality. Another way to check for metering support is to manually look for the counters in Performance Monitor.
If named instances of power meters appear in the box labeled Instances of Selected Object , your platform supports metering. The Power counter that shows power in watts appears in the selected counter group.
The exact derivation of the power data value is not specified. For example, it could be an instantaneous power draw or an average power draw over some time interval. If your server platform does not support metering, you can use a physical metering device connected to the power supply input to measure system power draw or energy consumption. To establish a baseline, you should measure the average power required at various system load points, from idle to percent maximum throughput to generate a load line.
The following figure shows load lines for three sample configurations:. You can use load lines to evaluate and compare the performance and energy consumption of configurations at all load points. In this particular example, it is easy to see what the best configuration is. However, there can easily be scenarios where one configuration works best for heavy workloads and one works best for light workloads.
You need to thoroughly understand your workload requirements to choose an optimal configuration. Don't assume that when you find a good configuration, it will always remain optimal.
You should measure system utilization and energy consumption on a regular basis and after changes in workloads, workload levels, or server hardware.
When you run PowerCfg. The tool generates a simple HTML report in the current directory. To ensure an accurate analysis, make sure that all local apps are closed before you run PowerCfg. This tool provides a simple way to identify and fix power management issues, potentially resulting in significant cost savings in a large datacenter. For more info about PowerCfg. Windows Server has three built-in power plans designed to meet different sets of business needs.
These plans provide a simple way for you to customize a server to meet power or performance goals. The following table describes the plans, lists the common scenarios in which to use each plan, and gives some implementation details for each plan. These power plans exist in Windows for alternating current AC and direct current DC powered systems, but we will assume that servers are always using an AC power source. For more info on power plans and power policy configurations, see Powercfg command-line options.
Some server manufactures have their own power management options available through the BIOS settings. If the operating system does not have control over the power management, changing the power plans in Windows will not affect system power and performance. Each power plan represents a combination of numerous underlying power management parameters. The built-in plans are three collections of recommended settings that cover a wide variety of workloads and scenarios. However, we recognize that these plans will not meet every customer's needs.
The following sections describe ways to tune some specific processor power management parameters to meet goals not addressed by the three built-in plans. If you need to understand a wider array of power parameters, see Powercfg command-line options. HWP is a new capability for a cooperative hardware and software performance control. OS is no longer required to monitor activity and select frequency at regular intervals. Switching to HWP has several benefits:. Windows can still set the minimum and maximum processor states to limit the range of frequencies that the processors can execute.
It can also set the following Processor energy performance preference policy EPP parameter to indicate HWP to favor power or performance. The following commands decrease the EPP value to 0 on current power plan to totally favor performance over power:.
Processors change between performance states P-states very quickly to match supply to demand, delivering performance where necessary and saving energy when possible. If your server has specific high-performance or minimum-power-consumption requirements, you might consider configuring the Minimum Processor Performance State parameter or the Maximum Processor Performance State parameter. You guessed it, more cache.
Recommending RAM is a bit of a two-edged sword. Problem is, recommending how much RAM to use is really nothing more than an educated guess. So, the trick is to install enough RAM so you never really deplete it all, while still having as little left over as you can. Obviously, a comprehensive performance baseline is out of the scope for this post, but a good rule of thumb is to simply monitor Working Set with Perfmon.
Application recommendations are of course going to trump any ad hoc testing you may do. If a vendor says you need X amount of RAM, it is best to install at least that much just to be on the safe side. The pagefile is the other piece of virtual memory that we need to be concerned about.
The pagefile is really just a file on the hard disk that is set up so that it operates like RAM. Problem is, RAM is fast and hard disks are slow. So, having to read or write to the hard disk when the system needs to satisfy a memory request can be very time consuming. To speed access to the paging file, it is recommended to place it on a separate physical disk than the operating system.
Could this be your situation? Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Well, two suspects: Network overload, especially on the server side. Disc overload ; In you case, check also for VmWare overload. Improve this answer. TomTom TomTom Thanks for the ideas. Do you know if there is a way to load balance incoming file requests across multiple network cards?
Sure there is. But it requires a hiigher end network card - intel has great cards. I use the 4 channel ones, supporting hardare request and data queueing. Great for performance. Do you think that it would do any good to turn up another virtual network card that is linked to an additional physical network card for this virtual server and then figure out how to load balance or bond them within Windows?
For reference, here is an interesting article: blogs. It would be sensible to realize that this asks for a physical server, not virtual. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name.
0コメント