Power conservation in partitioned data processing systems

Abstract

A power-aware, logically partitioned data processing system and corresponding method of use include a set of physical resources and a hypervisor. The hypervisor creates partitions and allocates at least some of the physical resources to the partitions. The system further includes means for reducing the power consumption of any physical resources not allocated to a partition. The hypervisor may allocate physical resources to the partitions to maximize the number of unallocated physical resources. The physical resources may include processors and the hypervisor may allocate a fractional portion of at least one processor to a partition. In this embodiment, the system may reduce power consumption by scaling the supply voltage or clocking frequency to the fractionally allocated processor. The resources may include memory modules and the hypervisor may dynamically reduce the allocated memory and power consumption by minimizing the number of memory modules needed to support the memory allocated to the partitions. The resources may also include disks provided through a storage-area network (SAN). This SAN may be partitioned in the same manner as the main data processing system, and the SAN partitioning may turn off power to unallocated or unused disk drives to reduce power consumption.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.