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Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service FAQs
Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring ServiceQ: What is the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service?
A:
The Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service enables you to make more efficient use of your energy consumption, temperature, and load utilization for server and storage systems in your datacenter while maintaining system uptime.
Q: What are the benefits of the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service?
A:
The Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service provides the following benefits:
Q: Do I need a support contract for this service?
A:
No. The Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service is a service that provides power monitoring capabilities of your datacenter. Support for using the service is provided through one of the following sites:
Q: What systems can be monitored by the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service?
A:
Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service currently supports the list of platforms located at: http://www.sun.com/service/power/techspecs.jsp
Q: Can the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service run on our company's Intranet without a connection to Sun?
A:
No, not at this time.
Subscribe to the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring ServiceQ: What do I need to do to subscribe to the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service?
A:
First you need to register for a Sun Online Account if you do not already have one.
Q: How do I register for a Sun Online Account?
A:
Complete one of the following steps:
Q: How do I know if I already have a Sun Online Account?
A:
You already have a Sun Online Account if you have an account on MySun, Sun Store, SunSolve, the Online Support Center, or Sun Download Center. Use the same user name and password during registration to log into the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service.
Your account information is associated with your email address. If you forget either or both user name and password, click the Forgot Password link on the Login page. Q: Which web browsers can I use to access the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service?
A:
Firefox 2.0 is recommended for use with Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service. Please note that other browsers (for example, Safari, Opera, or Internet Explorer 6 and 7) might work, but they have not been tested and the style sheets might not display correctly.
Q: How do I subscribe to the service after I register for a Sun Online Account?
A:
Complete the following steps:
Installation and ActivationQ: What are the system requirements for the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service?
A:
Before you install the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service software, your systems must meet the requirements outlined at: http://www.sun.com/service/power/techspecs.jsp.
Q: What operating systems are supported?
A:
For the Sun Automated Service Manager (SASM) servers, Solaris 8, 9 or 10 for UltraSPARC or X64-based servers.
Q: Where do I find the installation instructions for the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service software?
A:
This information is included with the software. After you download the software please refer to the document,
SUNWipmdc-INSTALL.txt
Q: How long does it take to install and configure the software?
A:
The installation process takes less than a few minutes as long the pre-step of configuration is done by the customer. Configuration of the systems takes any where between 5 minutes to 30 minutes depending on the number of systems. Once the configuration is done, the process of service activation is instantaneous.
Grouping of SystemsQ: What is the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service dashboard?
A:
The dashboard shows a status indicator (good, warning level, alarm level or no data available) for both the current and last 24 hours of power, temperature and CPU utilization. In addition, the average power usage by platform (system) type is shown.
Q: Why do I want to group my systems?
A:
A group is a collection of systems you want to monitor. Groupings enable you to search for systems using the host name and IP address, and they enable you to sort your systems in alphabetical order.
Q: How do I group my systems?
A:
The Groupings tab displays the fields you use to group your systems. You can group your systems in any way that best meets your needs, such as by type or location. A single system can belong to more than one group.
Q: Are racks included as a unit of measure?
A:
You can set up racks of servers as a group.
Q: What is an Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service dashboard group?
A:
A dashboard group is the set of groups on the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service dashboard that are displayed when you log into the Sun Services Portal. You can select a maximum of five groups to be displayed.
Q: What are pre-defined groups and how are they defined?
A:
Pre-defined groups are systems that are dynamically grouped for you. There are two types of pre-defined groups:
Q: What are Subnet based groups?
A:
Subnet based groups are based on the IP address within the subnet. All systems in the same subnet are grouped together into one group. Often these systems are located in the same rack of the data center. All subnet groups have a prefix of Rack.
Q: What are System based groups?
A:
System groups are based on the type of system to which the individual host machines belong. All the System Type groups have a suffix of Platform Group.
ReportsQ: What types of reports are available?
A:
The following reports are available from the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service:
Q: How is the data for the reports obtained?
A:
When your systems have been registered with the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service and the service is activated, the data is obtained directly from your registered systems.
Q: How is the Accounting Report generated?
A:
The power usage per system is sampled every 5 minutes. The report uses the average power used over the period of time in its calculation. The report is an estimate and is not intended to replace the utility bill.
Q: How do I generate reports for all my groups?
A:
When filtering your data, select All in the Groups field or leave the field empty. This action defaults to reporting on all of your groups.
Q: What temperature scale is used?
A:
You can select the temperature scale you prefer: Celsius or Fahrenheit.
Q: How current is the information that is displayed in the reports?
A:
Data is collected and charts are refreshed every five minutes. If you want immediate results, you can use the Refresh button to obtain the most current data.
Q: Does the Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service measure real wattage, or is it based on estimates?
A:
The temperature and power data used depends on whether this is built-in diagnostics from the system. Sun uses an inference engine based on internal lab testing. Our analysis shows that in many cases the inference engine provides more accurate data than physical instruments on your site.
Q: Can I set the thresholds for my systems?
A:
If you have the appropriate administrative permissions, you can set power and temperature thresholds for specific platforms. The load level uses Sun-defined thresholds and cannot be re-defined.
Q: Can I obtain a copy of a report?
A:
Yes. You can export a report in a plain text or XML file format.
Q: Why might the data initially display improperly for selected periods of time?
A:
When the collection of data is initially enabled for a given system, there is not yet data available for some of the selectable periods (for example, requesting a report based on the previous week’s power consumption when data collection began the previous day). It is recommended that you select only periods of time for which data has been collected. Note that the data that is displayed is in UTC (Co-ordinated Universal Time) which might not be the same time zone in which you are located.
Q: What does it mean when there are breaks in the trend data graph for power, load or temperature?
A:
If there were any periods of time when system data was not collected, those times will be indicated as a blank or missing data point on the graph. If you are missing any power, load or temperature data, this would be expected behavior. Examples of such problems would be, network outages a the customer site, if the Data Collector can not login into the remote system(s) to collect data or the service has been discontinued.
Q: Why are there no reports displaying for my systems?
A:
If you are not the person who initiated and activated IPM-Early Access on the portal, you cannot view Sun Intelligent Power Monitoring Service reports for the activated systems until your ID is associated with the appropriate organization and asset groups.
Q: Why is there no data for my systems?
A:
It takes between 5 - 10 minutes for the data to be displayed on the portal. The data is collected every five minutes.
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HighlightsBuilt on innovative Sun patented technologies, the Sun Intelligent Power
Monitoring Service makes it possible to discern more accurate power
utilization measurements--faster and at a lower cost to the
organization. Learn more about Sun's approach to economizing power in
the data center.
Future Proof the DatacenterWatch how Sun increased storage capacity by 244%, increased computer power by 456%, cut energy costs by 60% and were awarded $1.2 million in rebates...
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