Energy Efficient Servers: Blueprints for Data Center Optimization

Energy Efficient Servers: Blueprints for Data Center Optimization introduces engineers and IT professionals to the power management technologies and techniques used in energy efficient servers. The book includes a deep examination of different features used in processors, memory, interconnects, I/O devices, and other platform components. It outlines the power and performance impact of these features and the role firmware and software play in initialization and control. Using examples from cloud, HPC, and enterprise environments, the book demonstrates how various power management technologies are utilized across a range of server utilization. It teaches the reader how to monitor, analyze, and optimize their environment to best suit their needs. It shares optimization techniques used by data center administrators and system optimization experts at the world’s most advanced data centers.

What you’ll learn

• Develop a deep understanding of power management in modern servers – from data center and systems software to low-level processor technologies – and all the pieces in-between.
• Build an understanding of technologies used in cores, caches, memory, system agents, processor interconnects, and PCI-E to manage power.
• Learn techniques for monitoring and characterizing server power management technologies including component and system level impact.
• Develop strategies to improve infrastructure utilization and cost-effectiveness, to guide configuration and purchasing decisions, and to enhance application deployment.
• Learn new techniques to optimize a server for energy efficiency while still meeting the service level requirements of software, related systems in the data center, and end customers.

Who this book is for

Primarily: Engineers and IT professionals. More broadly, the book appeals to a wide technologist audience – anyone who designs or relies on a server to run services and applications – from software engineers, to system administrators, to equipment and system manufacturers, to data center operators.

About the Authors

Corey Gough is a principal engineer focused on server energy efficiency in Intelʹs Data Center Group. He currently leads efforts in power and performance analysis, system optimization, and new technology development with 17 years of expertise in power/performance. Corey lives in Portland, Oregon, and earned his BS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.

Winston Saunders has worked at Intel for nearly two decades and currently leads Security Technology Execution Initiatives in the Data Center Group there. Winston is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University of Washington.

Ian Steiner has worked at Intel on the CPU architecture team for nearly a decade and is currently a member of the Product Development Group. His primary focus is on power management and power/performance optimization across the server product line. Ian lives in Portland, Oregon, and earned his MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.